CTOMS CEO sent me the following history of the Rock Exotica TactiGrab RG20 / CTOMS Quickie Ascender:

"The history of the device is not well known, nor straight forward. I’m going to try to make a very long story short. Back in about 2009, I engaged Kirk Mauthner to develop a small diameter rope egress system for military applications. He started with his Escape Artist and without getting into too much detail, that evolved into the PDQ, was abandoned for our application and continued to evolution into the current Quickie Descender.

"Concurrently, Rock was working with… [others on a similar project]. They were using a 6.5mm Bluewater Technora sheath Dyneema Core rope with a micro-8, they had a small double pulley, a complicated device that I have never seen reference or a picture of on the internet called a SLRP, and a rope grab. Rock had these on his site on a page called Other Exotic Devices, but they were not for sale to the public.

"I was aware of them from that web page, so I asked Kirk if it was possible to reach out to Rock and ask him if we could put a sheave where the carabiner eye was on his rope grab. I still have one of the original prototypes of that. Rock and Kirk designed the sheave and the locking plate and updated the device through a number if iterations. Later I asked them to add a spring to the cam, which was also eventually included.

"Rock made them for us, and a few for himself he marketed as a TactiGrab, though I don’t think he ever advertised them. We called it the Quickie Ascender to go with the Quickie Descender. Rock and Kirk would apply and receive a patent for it.

"Rock would eventually sell I believe majority shares in his company. The QA as we call it, was low volume and not a priority or interest to make, especially with the new management and focus on higher volume growth products. The QD was being made in Canada by a company called Performance Manufacturing in Kelowna, BC. Manufacturing of the QA (though not the patent) was transferred from Rock to Performance quite a few years ago. With that shift we fixed a sticky spring issue and changed the plastic sheave to bronze.

"In 2025, CTOMS purchased Performance Manufacturing and moved it to Edmonton, and here we are now. Rock and Kirk still own the patent."