A few days ago I went to the gym to ease my climbing addiction (no chance to climb outside, weather unbearable) and one dude approached me, that if I could take him outside. Said why not, I could use a new belay slave, especially now, when my gf works in an afternoon shift. I invited the guy over to my place on the next day, to practice a few things, mainly jugging, if he gets stuck during a harder pitch.

Grabbed my harness and some random length of static rope (I'm really good at having random length of unused cords lying around for no reason) and started to look for my ascenders. I've soon realized that the little monsters, who knot your perfectly coiled rope, mess up your gear, etc, must have hid my ascenders somewhere in the bottom of the Pile o' Gear™ I have. Luckily there are some items that I never remove from my harness, among them is my grigri, a prusik and my anchor/rappel extender system (sling girth hitched to harness, knot about 2/3 length and a biner at the end)

Fixed the static rope to a tree in my garden, it was a bit short and the end was hanging about a meter above the ground. Attached the grigri and the prusik to the rope, made a foot loop from my anchor sling, and ta-da you have a ghetto ascender system. Explained the guy how the system works, sit back on the grigri, push up with your leg, etc. Started to demo it, and by default I reached up to pull on my foot "ascender" The prusik obviously slid down, along with my hand and pushed the cam of grigri down. Bam, sitting on my ass, in the grass, wondering wtf happened. Don't grab the fucking prusik happened.

The guy was giving me weird looks, basically asking with his eyes "dude, do you even know what are you doing?" but didn't say a word. Rigged the whole system again, and succesfully ascended that measly 5 meters to the anchor branch. The ascent reminded me when I was forced to jug a 60m fixed dynamic line with a reverso and prusik. Fun times. 3 pitch route, decided to work the second p on solo TR. Fixed the rope at the top, rapped, and just when I reached the anchor of the first pitch and anchored in, the rigid plasticky loop on my BD harness decided that it's time to pop. Of course my trax and ascender was on that loop... To add insult to injury the route was overhanging above.

Back to the present, removed the prusik, started to rap on grigri... and I was on the ground again. Remember, at the beginning I said the rope didn't reach the ground? Well, my ass did. My apprentice only said that his time is up, and he must go to pick up his girlfriend. When I asked him if he wants to climb this weekend, because the weather forecast shows a cold front coming, he said the he already has a program :)

To put it bluntlyI don't want to climb with someone who can't rescue him/herself or me when things go south. Part of that is the ability to ascend a rope with the gear on hand.