Getting ready for hilly rides??

[velo]

We're going to be camping here in a couple of months and the area where we are going is quite hilly. I'll want to ride while there, as we'll be there for a week and the rides will be gorgeous, especially with the autumn colors.

Where I live, it's rather flat and where I ride, we have only gentle rolling hills. If I travel an hour away by car, I can get some steep, longer and shorter hills - lots of good hill work. Right now, I can't regularly take the two extra hours each time I ride to travel by car to these hills and even trying to do so once a week is difficult. In the area I ride, there is only one decent shorter hill, that flattens at the top into a more gentle, long uphill . However, it's on an MUP and without going into detail, it's not a good hill to repeat. I usually ride 6 days a week, and I make sure to do this hill each time, even on recovery rides.

When my bike was built, I was racing crits and in obviously much, much better shape. I ride a 39/53 up front and a 13/26 (10 speed) in the back. Fine for me then, even on hills, but not exactly a good set up for me on hills right now. Unless I get better at climbing, I'm not going to be able to ride on our camping trip - I just won't have a low enough gear. I'll be walking more than riding, I'm afraid. I'm losing weight pretty fast with all the riding, but I expect I'll still be at least 15 lbs. overweight when we go, so that's another strike against me.

Is there anything other than actual hill work that will help my climbing? I've been back to riding about 6 - 7 weeks and I'm working mainly on endurance, getting in a fair amount of miles (a little under 1000 so far, avg. about 150/wk) since I started back. I do intervals once a week, one long ride, one short ride that is usually a recovery ride and then a few moderate rides (usually 25 - 30 miles). That's not much of a fitness base. Will this be enough to do some hilly rides in 10 weeks, though? Is there anything else I can do to get ready to ride some hills? I'm pretty sure the answer is "no", but thought people here would have an idea or something that worked for them. TIA!

P.S. Sorry so long... just wanted to explain things thoroughly.