It's not so much that the technique is inobvious, but I have other motives, and am concerned for relevance.
So far as motives go, I am not aiming to fail-forward. I'm happy to fail-think-of-another-approach, or fail-the-BBEG-wins-and-this-is-your-world-now. Fail-forward seems to imply that the characters must progress down the planned path. I'm not aiming for that.
Relevance is trickier. Our game system contains declarations of relevance, for example Strength (Athletics) is relevant to perpendicular climbs. What if I characterise a perpendicular obstacle as an ascent? I think we still say Strength (Athletics) is relevant because in language ascent might be a synonym of climb. We recently had a lengthy debate on what a Strength (Athletics) check would be relevant to, so evidently views can differ around the edges. But this is the set up - skill X is declared to be relevant to descriptions Y.
What about the consequence of the check? Is Strength (Athletics) relevant to "take 8d6 bludgeoning damage"? Relevance here is threaded through the falling mechanics. Is Strength (Athletics) relevant to "creatures notice you"? Again, around the edges, views are going to differ. One way of assessing relevance could be simply, the count of players who, once in possession of a rule and a description, believe that rule should give them leverage over that description. Leverage here means something like, ability to modify the narrative - to decide stochastically how it turns out. On that grounds, my premise is that many players (myself included) expect Strength (Athletics) to give them leverage in connection with a described perpendicular obstacle, and expect bludgeoning damage as a relevant consequence of failure in a describe ascent.
In fact your chain of skill checks might meet relevance quite well, without being justified on grounds of needing to fail forward for groups who aren't concerned to fail forward.