When climbing steep hills, you are “lifting” the weight of the entire uni as you go up, so it’s not just rotational weight involved. For example, it would be harder to climb a 20% grade with a 3 pound wheelset, if the rest of the uni weighed 15 pounds. Conversely, it would be easier to climb the same hill with a 5 pound wheelset, if the rest of the uni weighed only 8 pounds.
I think this is unlikely; rotational weight is much more important, especially when you’re doing something like a slow-paced, one pedal at a time hill climb. I’ll take the light wheel and the heavy frame over the heavy wheel and the light frame, any day.
Rotational weight is definitely a factor, but when climbing really steep hills, every ounce counts, no matter where it is. Yes, I’d rather have the least weight in the wheelset, but that wouldn’t help much if I was carrying a 50lb backpack while riding up a 25% grade! That’s why I also believe that trimming down a few pounds in body weight (if the rider has some extra body fat to lose) would make for more efficient climbing than losing 100 grams from the wheel. 
Hill climb
Anyone who claims they can climb 8 miles at 8% with a 36" and 110 cranks is either on the same juice Lance was on, a mountain goat or has actually never done it.
I’ve done Whiteface on a 36" with 170 cranks and a 29" with the same 170 cranks. 10 minutes faster with the 29"
The record for Mt. Washington (12.5%) was by Johnathon who did it on a 20" wheel. The second best time was on a 25" with 170 cranks.
Climbing a 1/2 mile long hill is a whole lot different then 8 miles. You can not maintain momentum for 8 miles so you have to rely on pace, and cadence. It kills time to have to stand out of the saddle
Best thing to do is to go to a mountain and try your options before you race it.
I’d love to see you ride 15% grades on your 36er, especially with 125’s. Come down here and try the route I’ve been riding on my 11.7lb 700c, with 165’s. It has several long stretches of 15-16% grades-one that’s over a mile long. The route is known to the road bike community as the “big one”. It’s about 7 miles round trip. Really fun and challenging. Truth be told, the vast majority of cyclists take a detour to bypass these steepest sections. 
Could you do me a favor and update the hillclimb record thread?
Also, I’ve ridden everything from 29x165 to 29x137 on Whiteface. I like the 29x150s the best (my best Whiteface time (1:15))
And, Terry, the light unis you have would be awesome on those longer races. You have to go and race Diablo up in the SF area.
Can you show a map of this route? That sounds like something I would like. Of course, I would be on a 26" or 29" with 150s.
It is in Rancho Palos Verdes. The two steepest streets have long stretches of 14-16% grades. The road bikers usually ride alternate streets to avoid these steeper grades, but the steepest sections are my favorite part of the route! The lesser grades of 6-10% feel almost like your in low gear by comparison! Almost like when you downshift from high gear to 1:1 on a GUni!
And can you just imagine if we had a downgeared hub, say 1:1 - .66:1, then your 29" would be ~20" for steep climbing, mmmmmm wouldn’t that be nice for sit and spin 
Speaking of gunis, has anyone built a 20"guni for road climbing? It’d be a small wheel, kinda twitchy, but for smooth pavement…it could be interesting.
How about a GUni 16" 24" in high 
I’m thinking those 165mm cranks are gonna cause some pedal strike issues, but then you’ll be so close the ground… you can just roll off 
So seriously, are folks not seeing the advantage of having a geared down hub? Even for a 29er, the ability to shift down so you can sit and spin, this would be just too cool. I did a long exploratory ride on the Pinhoti, much of which ended up being steep climbs on double track and some gravel roads, a low gear would have been awesome because I got so tired I ended up walking 
Walking a unicycle is stoopid, esp if all we need is a lower gear. I shouldn’t have to ride a baby sized wheel in order to have a low gear, that is equally stoopid.
One “adult sized” wheel, two gears, are you with me?!
Road bikes don’t have gears below 1:1; in most cases their smallest gear is bigger than 36" effective gear. For mountain biking there are lower gears than that, but our gearing is far more deficient on the high end than the low end.
We need a pot for you to put a $ in every time you mention that 
I can see what your saying the attributes of a big wheel are fantastic (only speaking from 29er riding but extrapolating for a 36er) and the ability to ride a big old wheel up mammoth hills would extend the usability of a 36er as for most people the top end of a SS 36er is fine with smaller cranks so a geared down hub would allow for shorter cranks and better hill climbing.
As much as a I love kit I came to unicycling for the challenge and simplicity, as I have said before I shed gears on my MTB along with suspension years ago for a purer riding experience and the move to a Uni was a continuation of that. I feel slightly dirty for adding a brake as the simplicity of one moving component on a basic uni is very appealing and to be honest I could live without a brake for the most part (my knees may not over the long term :p)
Three gears with an under seat shifter would be the ultimate set up (down,1:1,up), but with our tiny niche sport with an even smaller subset of riders who want a geared hub it will never happen
And even smaller subset who are able and willing to pay for the tech.
Indeed which is why we are lucky we have the option of just one geared hub.
I just want 32 hole hubs to be standard
Anyway nice road for me tomorrow with a 1.5 mile climb at the start, almost cleared it in one last weekend so am determined to do it in one! Pretty steep but not as harsh as the guys in this tread are riding. 
The thing about bikes is that you can ride very high gears uphill pretty efficiently by shifting your body forward and back in time to your cadence. You shift forward during the power part of your pedal stroke, and then in the “dead spot” you slide backwards - an observer at the side would see your body stop climbing, while the bike moves forward under you. You don’t need much leverage to move just the bike.
You don’t have the luxury of moving your center of gravity back and forth like that on a unicycle, so you end up standing, pedaling half strokes, driving through the dead spot, and it’s just exhausting. It’s even worse because you don’t have clipless pedals that let you pull back, you just push down.
I can climb long steep grades on my fixed gear bike and not feel at any disadvantage to a geared bike, but on the unicycle I really want to sit and spin. I would use a lower gear on my 29" wheel pretty much every day.
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And MTB gearing is a lot lower than uni gearing; even in the middle ring I have 1:1 gearing with longer cranks (175 vs. 165/150) and a smaller wheel (26 vs 29) than I do on the uni. That lowest middle ring gear is my favorite offroad gear. And the uni needs that gear more than the bike does, for the bikes-climb-better-in-hard-gears reason I gave above.
32% now that’s steep!
Here’s a little “uni-Cam” POV I just shot doing a crazy steep hill climb on my 24. You really get a good sense of just how insanely steep it is. My tire was at 80 psi and about 3/4 of the way up I accidentally ran over some glass! Was there a BANG heard 'round the world? 
Tom, you know better than to compare unis to bikes 
If we are in need of high end gearing more so than low end gearing, then why does this thread exist and why are we working so hard to make it easier to climb?
Right, so clearly there is a need for more low end gearing, but maybe there’s a better way to state it than by the desired ratio, possibly by using spin rate or rpm?
Bikers aim for 90-100rpm as an efficient spin rate, I tend to be a masher so my spin rate on bikes is more like 75-80, though I did enjoy heavy mash sessions in my youth, but after a five year stint carless and riding 10k or so a year, I learned to spin faster
I’m a fairly strong climber on a uni, but there are times when I need to recover while riding, just a little sit and spin, but if I don’t have the power to do so because I am too tired or because the climb is too steep, then I walk or stop to rest.
I’d prefer a lower gear over walking or stopping to rest, hence my interest in a step down geared hub.
Top end speed on a uni has never been an issue, I only ride as fast as I can “run out of a upd”.
After watching Terry climb that steep sidewalk, is it not obvious that we need a way to increase our cadence? What was the average cadence on that climb, 30-35rpm?
Imagine how it would have been if Terry could have spun at 60-70rpm…it would have been easier and more sustainable on a longer ride.
The same technique works on a unicycle; we call it the Funky Chicken.
