rccardr 

Some rides, such as Eroica CA, have alternative and shorter routes suitable for the gearing you describe.
Otherwise, you can walk up the steeper bits,also known as a ‘two foot gear’.
That’s what even a lot of the hard men 100 years ago did. Check out the pics available on Google.
What some of us do is either obtain/build a bike with appropriate gearing or modify an existing bike’s gearing to give us more oomph up the hills.

I would not take a bike with 50-28 gearing to an event like Eroica or Cino, but that’s me. Right tool for the job, and all that.