I peruse Cal Topo and typically don't find much that I haven't seen before. For the past couple of years I have noticed two peaks just south of Hungry Valley that no one climbs. I could find one hike write up and that was it. This was surprising because even though they were under 5,000 feet, they were named peaks. I decided that it was time to check these peaks out and see if they were doable. There is an OHV road that leaves from Kings CG just before Piru Creek. Unfortunately this OHV road does not show up on any Topo maps but can be seen on the Los Padres one. I dutifully printed out the route through Hungry Valley and my topo map from the TH but neglected to get directions to the CG itself. After leaving Hungry Valley I came to a dirt road heading to the right direction with the ridge just to the south. The write up for the hike had been six years ago was it possible that the CG had been closed and this was now the starting spot? It was clear that this valley abutted against the ridge we needed to get on. I made an executive decision to try the dirt road and if it didn't work we'd drive further down the road and see if we missed anything.
About a half mile walk in led to a clearing with a lot of cement blocks and plumbing, was this the old campground? It looked too old but who knew? Nothing was matching my maps and I was getting irritated. I checked out the subsidiary ridge lines and they overall looked clear, I opted for a direct xcountry route at this stage. First going up a draw and then scrambling to the ridge which had some large dismantled water towers just below where we accessed the ridge. Continuing on this ridge to the south it was obvious that there was another canyon between us and the main ridge which must be where the CG actually was. We dropped off the ridge and hit the drainage that had an old road. I still couldn't place where we were on the map but I saw a saddle on the next ridge and up xcountry we went again. This time after we got to a subsidiary bump we connected to a road that came up from the drainage, what luck. This road was in great shape and we made it up to the saddle in no time. There was a locked gate there which we hopped, I still didn't know where we were on the ridge vis-a-vis the peaks but progress was being made.
The other side started heading downward and out of nowhere ATV tracks appeared . As we continued down it all clicked in place, we were on the OHV trail that we were supposed to take up and the CG was further to the west. Retracing our steps I found a tricky junction coming in from the right that also had the ATV tracks, we were oriented. From this saddle we were at the jumping off point for the Bear Mountain route as we were much further east then I had thought. This xcountry ridge to the left of the saddle is about a mile long but has just enough spacing that you don't have to bushwhack that much. You first head in an easterly direction, hit a flat section, and then jog southward. A singular tree at the top of Bear can keep you oriented. Once at the tree you realize that the eastern spot is probably higher and has a nice view of Hungry Valley. There was another spot just south of there that had a similar elevation so we moseyed over there to hit all the options.
From there we retraced our route back to the OHV and took that back in an easterly direction. There are supposedly many prospector digs in this area. I could see the tailings but none of the actual holes. The OHV goes uphill significantly and you finally reach a point where it starts to descend gradually on the ridge. From here you leave the trail to the left to the only real prominent bump on the ridge and after an 1/8 of a mile you're on the top of Gold Hill where I left a little cairn. The OHV continues descending from here in an easterly direction and then north to the campground proper that is open for business with a paved road leading to it. From there it was simply a matter of hiking back to the main road and following it back to our car.
Despite the initial setback our route to Bear was actually much more direct and shorter. The mileage was around 8-9 miles, no idea on elevation gain, and took about 3.5 hours. Zero idea why this hike isn't more popular especially with Gold Hill being really accessible but there it is.
