Originally Posted by CyLowe97
To my utter astonishment*, the hill had quite a grade to it (though I can't tell you what that is, because I don't have one of them fancy Garmins) and my legs pretty much stopped being able to turn the crank about halfway up. That moment of "Oh, *@#*" occurs and there is no way the RD is going to downshift under the load.
Obviously, anticipating the need to shift is the answer. However, when you're caught in this situation, if you give it one or two pedal strokes as hard as you can to accelerate the bike, then soft pedal, and shift quickly (before you fall over) as you soft pedal you can get it to shift.