@gembo, I've been doing the long way round in order to get more strength in my legs and more aerobic capacity. Today was a rest day.
A few weeks ago I took the torpedo up Ravelrig Road to Balerno, and the effort and the gradient very nearly killed me.
@Laidback, yes, the 12 Steepest Ridable Streets in Central Edinburgh ride!
If you ignore friction between the rider and the seat cushion, and the tendency to hold onto the handlebars, and the fact that most recumbent riders are clipped in and as Morningsider noted, could hang from the pedals if they so wished, then the answer is much as Cyclingmollie suggested.
My training bike has a seat angle of about 15 degrees; it's really 'slammed', as the ricers might put it, similar to Dave's old Raptobike low racer. But almost every recumbent seat has a human body-shaped curve to it, and a sort of kicker to hold the shoulders in place better, rather than being a straight line, so you would have to account for that angle rather than the average seat angle.
I've ridden up 1:3 - the footpath in Oban from Craigard Road to Ardconnel Road (thence McCaig's Tower). My friend, also on a recumbent, was starting to unload his front wheel, while I was listening to the spokes in my rear wheel protesting against the torque.
I have also ridden up (some of) this hill, near Port Glasgow:
Test your brakes by beqi, on Flickr
but on both occasions I was riding my sparkly purple recumbent whose seat back angle is about 70 degrees from horizontal, and thus I would probably need to be cycling up a vertical wall to have much likelihood of sliding backwards off the seat!
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