I admit that I never liked Rock Climb's dramatic animation and how it would usually form a mound of earth, so at least I appreciated that the animators used the move a bit differently in that battle to allow smoother movement. I simply disliked the animation when Suzuna's Nyula was skating on the ice.
I'm willing to overlook that purely because it was one of Grotle's few good moments but yeah it was a bit goofy.