Well, that's the beauty of mt biking. Your skills improve. You learn how to place your body over the bike and keep pressure on the front tire, how to pedal while keeping the rear wheel from slipping. Lot of stuff that is very helpful once you hop on the roadie. Every so often I notice that I lay my body across the bike when riding steep sections on the road. As I look at other ride partners, they aren't and usually they're having some sort of trouble on the steep section like lifting wheels. That's usually when I realize they don't do any MTB rides. It really helps the roadrides doing some MTB on steeep dirt. On a 14% grade riding the roadbike, I have aboslutely no problem with a lifting front wheel.
I get a kick out of roadies that knock MTB'ers (silly cliquish kid stuff) when in fact if roadies did more MTB'in, they'de be better bike handlers. Now going down those steep sections with rocks dirts and ruts, doing a MTN decent on the roadie is a piece of cake, another advantage of expanding ride sytles from roadie only to others.!
BTW, if you watch any major tour rides, TDF, Giro, Spain, you'll see that a big percentage of the riders that do well in the mtns, including the great descenders, many are from cyclocross and MTB backgrounds. Including Lance, he rides MTB too.
A pic of Potato Mtn, the top section where the 26% grade lives.
I took the pic with a section of the other mtn to the left so that one can see how steep it is in relation. This is after nearly 5 or 6 miles of climbing, oh joy!
On the pic section to the left, you can see how I positioned my body over the front wheel. If I hit a 12%+ grade on the roadie, you can bet 5 bucks that if you look over at me, I'll be in a similar position
A vid of the ride I posted a few months back. AT 1:46 I hit the section in the pic above, at 1:56 I'm on the steep section and really surprised that I can talk and ride up with one hand while recording myself with the recorder. Hey, so it's a short clip but I did it! I was surprised!