Most have suffered from the leans at some time. It is never comfortable.
It would seem the pilot had a perfectly good autopilot available. Use it. It will maintain the aircraft in level flight and it will maintain a 700 foot rate of climb with three button pushes and a twiddle of the heading bug.
I actually don't think this is much to do with the chute which is why I tried to steer the discussion away from this aspect before my thread got combined with this one.
I think far more relevant is how and when to resort to the autopilot and in what circumstances this might not be enough to save the day. In the circumstances as appear to be described and given that I felt extremely disorientated the first thing I would have done would have been to engage the autopilot, then set up a climb to establish terrain clearance, then done a reality check on my heading to ensure it was the "best" heading to take up, then possibly declare a Pan given that I wasnt fly the published missed nor had I informed AT my intentions. Is it reasonable / possible that the confusion was so great that the pilot did not consider and alternative along these lines, and would you have gone about the "problem" in some other way? At what height and / or in what circumstances would you not consider the autopilot an option?