Not to defend on behalf of the author, but just felt like chiming in that actually I really liked how some challenges actually are impossible.. until you the the right stack of rings. Forces you to think about that and not just the events in isolation.
In my case I never had too much trouble with the mountain, but I ran into sprint once when it was impossible to keep up, and then quickly it was the high jump that had me out to dry. One ring (walk on walks) suddenly changed all that, which also gave it that spark of actually discovering something.