Two days later, 65-year-old Moose resident Bill Givens and 51-year-old Exum guide Jack Tackle repeated Johnson and Garibotti's feat, making Givens the oldest climber to complete the route. Both clients had an extensive climbing history with their guides, a requirement for tackling the exposed route, which includes extensive downclimbing and traversing.

"A lot of the stuff is not hard climbing, but the route-finding is challenging," Tackle said of the 10-peak traverse, which includes ascents of Teewinot, Mount Owen, the Grand Teton, Middle Teton, South Teton and Nez Perce. "It's the most challenging, difficult thing you can guide in the Tetons. It's a tremendous amount of responsibility because of the technical nature of the terrain from a guiding standpoint. It's always done with people who the guide knows can do it. You have a different level of responsibility and trust."

Tackle has guided the route five or six times in the past four years, but Garibotti ­ who set a record by completing the traverse in six hours, 49 minutes in 2000 ­ had never guided it before accompanying Ruben, whom he taught to climb.

"It's the type of climbing where it's tough for the guide to come up with systems to make it 100 percent safe," Garibotti said. "You have to have confidence in the person you were with."

Each of the climbers benefited from being able to use the Exum hut and gear cache located at the Lower Saddle of the Grand Teton, enabling both parties to complete the route in two days rather than the traditional three days.

"There's a certain benefit to doing it in two days," Garibotti said. "Even though you have to move over more terrain, with our cache at the Lower Saddle you can go a little lighter and be better rested. It's logistically less complicated."

Ruben's family lives in Cambridge, Mass., and owns a home in the valley. He began climbing with Garibotti when he was 9, during his family's first visit to Jackson. Since then, Ruben and his father, Steve, have climbed extensively with Garibotti in the Tetons and the Dolomites, and Garibotti has become a friend of the family. Ruben climbed Teewinot at age 11, has summitted the Grand Teton four times and has completed a single-day ascent of Mount Moran.

"Climbing isn't as much a sport as an activity, like reading," said Ruben, who pitches for his school's baseball team when not busy scaling peaks. "It's fun having one sport where you can compete against yourself."

Exceeding original goal

"Rolo had the idea to stay at the Saddle so we could possibly do the Grand Traverse," Ruben said. "We felt great after the first day, so we woke up the next morning and went for it, and it felt pretty good."

On the first day of the climb, Ruben and Garibotti left the Lupine Meadows parking lot at 3:30 a.m. and reached the summit of Teewinot by 7 a.m. From there they crossed over to Peak 11,840 and the East Prong, reaching the top of Mount Owen at 11 a.m. The pair then climbed above Gunsight Notch, a section that features the most difficult climbing on the route, a 5.8-rated pitch that leads onto the North Ridge of the Grand Teton. Cold temperatures and chilly winds made for difficult climbing conditions in the Italian Cracks, which the pair climbed to reach the summit of the Grand.

"The weather was brutally cold and so windy it felt like I would be blown off the rock," Ruben said. "My hands were turning purple just from how cold it was. That was the only part of the trip where I was like, 'Hey, this isn't too much fun.'"

The pair reached the top of the Grand at 4:15 p.m. before descending to the Lower Saddle to sleep. The following day Johnson and Garibotti climbed the Middle Teton and South Teton before heading east over Ice Cream Cone, Gilkey Tower, Spalding Peak, and Cloudveil Dome before reaching the summit of Nez Perce, the final peak on the traverse, at 2:15 p.m. Four hours later they were back at the car and Ruben was heading back to begin high school with an addition to his mountaineering resume that's likely incomprehensible to his peers. Garibotti said he was most impressed with the mental fortitude Ruben possessed for his age.

"I really never expected that he would be able to do it this year," Garibotti said. "I didn't expect that he would be that strong mentally. You hear of kids sport climbing hard routes at a young age, but it's not often that you hear of kids doing big mountaineering routes such as this one at an early age. I don't think I've ever felt this kind of satisfaction with a guided climb."

The day after Johnson and Garibotti returned, Givens and Tackle set out to repeat the route. A part-time resident of Moose, Givens has spent 20 years climbing with Tackle in the Tetons and New Hampshire and had to be convinced by Tackle that he was up to the challenge of the climb.

"Jack made me do it," joked Givens. "It was his idea, and as it turned out, it was a good one. I was a little concerned about being able to pull it off, because I wasn't sure what kind of shape I was in. It was certainly the hardest thing I've ever done."

Familiarity breeds success

After 19 hours of climbing in slightly warmer conditions than their predecessors faced, Givens and Tackle reached the Lower Saddle, where they spent the night. They started their second day of climbing at 6 a.m. and took 15 hours to complete the route, returning to Lupine Meadows at 9 p.m.

"Bill's an exceptionally gifted athlete and has done way harder technical climbs than this, so it was just a question of linking the climbs and the endurance factor," Tackle said. "It's rewarding for me to be with someone like Bill, because you have to be a way-above-average person to do it."

Givens admitted that by the time the pair reached Nez Perce he was quite tired, in part because snow and ice on the north sides of several peaks on the route forced them to climb additional terrain. He was quick to praise Tackle's route-finding prowess as well.

"I've never done that much scrambling and downclimbing in my life," Givens said. "The difficult parts were the descent off Mount Owen and the climb up Gunsight Notch and the climb up into the Grandstand. There was some ice in the gully below the notch, and we did a pitch on ice when we weren't really prepared for it."

Both Ruben and Givens are eager to explore new places and face new adventures. Givens said he'll continue to climb in the Tetons and in the Wind River range, but would also like to try climbing Denali again. A 2002 attempt with his son Mark was unsuccessful due to bad weather, but Givens said he's willing to go back to try again.