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I call bullshit. The design may not be the optimal setup for getting up steep hills, but give your bike to any half decent xc racer and i'd wager they'd be up those hills no worry.
Scrabble-
Firstly as a caveat, I don't necessarily disagree that this trail, whatever it is, isn't physically doable by a half decent XC rider.
However. It's a mathematical truth that there are friction/steepness combos that you cannot ride up and no amount of skill will overcome that. To take it to an extreme you can't ride up a vertical wall, because it is physically impossible to redirect your weight (as a vector force) into the wall, which means there cannot be any friction. The looser/slippier the ground, the shitter your tyres, the less you weigh*, etc., the lower the maximum slope angle you can ride up, because of the dependence on the normal force. In addition, when friction is maximised on the back wheel the whole system weight (including bike) is balanced over the back wheel and that means your front wheel is going to come up when you put torque through.
You can do some stuff like pushing down on the bars, lower pressure, more aggressive tyres, smooth pedalling, carrying momentum in, etc. but only so much is possible.
* The fatter you are the more traction you have all else being equal. So maybe the mistake was not eating enough cake and buying a fancy light bike.
Actually it'd be pretty cool to see if riding up with a rucksack and cages full of water makes enough of a difference to get up a really steep slope.
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For a little clarity- I rode up 2 of the 3, I’m not saying it’s impossible but that it’s tricky.
It’s the exact same problem I had when I rode up Zoncolan- where, it being 8km, I did end up lying over the handlebars. But that was so steep I’d never make changes to the bike or my position to deal with it, whereas I had the same thing three times in one section of SDW.
frankenbike
Dammit
Yes, but not for the bike wheelies on very steep climbs thing, I suspect that's simply a case of the frame design putting the weight in the "wrong" place.
I'll try moving the bars down a little, but I think TvH nailed it in his post (with pictures), and that the climbing issue is just an "they all do that sir".