an immediate 180-degree turn into the wind (over trees) at a 45-degree bank and continued another 45 degrees to intercept the runway.
Surely you were being launched into wind ?....
I had to re-read that a few times as it didn't make sense to me initially, but he could be correct. There are some hilltop sites which due to the slope on them are take off downhill and land uphill runways, particularly when aerotowing. The one on Wasserkuppe springs to mind.
Having had an aerotow in which the tow rope just fell off the glider at 300ft, with nothing broken, I'm a great believer in not trusting anything.
The trouble with practicing practicing aerotow cable breaks is like practicing failure modes with winch drivers and low winh lauch cable breaks. If you practice it for real, sooner or later something's going to get broken. In other words, a good justification for a realistic simulator.