genejockey 

There's a reason why the mountain stages of the Grand Tours are generally won by guys like Pantani, and not won by guys like Magnus Backstedt. We 'gravity enhanced' folks just have so much more mass to lift that we start out at a huge disadvantage. The good news is that the more you ride, the better you'll be at it. AND as long as you don't overcompensate for the calories burned, you will lose some of the weight, and simply losing that weight will make you faster up hills.

On one of my routes, there's a series of small hills that take between 2 and 10 minutes to climb. On shorter rides, I will sometimes really go hard on those, and then go easy to the next one. You can do that by going up and down the same hill, but for me, a series of hills was a lot more fun, because I got someplace. The other thing is on my long weekend rides, I started by riding a 3 mile, 7.5% average hill that takes 25-35 minutes (for me) every other week, then every week. Then I started doing a longer climb, then I added another shorter climb to that. I got really good - for me.

A good, well fitting, well set-up road bike is really great! It could help you keep up with the group before you get to the base of the climb without burning too many matches, so you'll have more left for the climb. But it's not a panacea. It will help, but it won't make you fly up the hills. That's up to you.