I’m finally at the stage that I can ride my uni around pretty well as well as do a free mount 9 out of 10 times. So I was tooling around the neighborhood yesterday & did a upd going up a hill - about a 5% grade.
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t mount and get started going up the hill. After about ten unsuccessful tries, I ended up doing a free mount from one side of the road, then turning into the hill to get going back up it.
What is the best way to do this? The more you ride, does it get easier?
You have got it right. If the hill is too steep, try and start sideways on the hill or even down hill and turn to go up. Just keep practicing, start on less steep grades and just keep practicing on steeper and steeper hills.
I find it is something pretty hard to do, and it doesn’t take much of an incline to keep me from mounting successfully, especially on the trial. You can always hang onto something and hop on. There is no rule that says you have to free mount, sometimes it’s about conserving energy and doing things easier.
I find a jump or static mount works well when going up hills. If you are freemounting and you roll backwards you will be making it an awful lot harder to both get going and keep your balance.
If going uphill I use either a rolling mount or in riding a 36 a rolling jump mount. When mounting uphill jump/push off that little bit harder to start with some forward momentum.
when I am too tired to do that I just mount sideways on the hill and then hop-twist to face the hill and start cranking.
Failing that I just run/walk to the top and start from there.
I try a rolling hop mount first. When I nail it just right (rarely, but sweet) it is effortless, because you “land” already leaning forward and with the pedals level. When that doesn’t work and I get tired from too many fails, I still do a rolling hop but perpendicular to the fall line then turn up.