When ski bums “retire.”
words :: Feet Banks // photography :: Jimmy Martinello
It’s true that no two mountains are exactly the same. However, it’s also true that all mountains are mountains, and the difference is how we perceive them. When Jeff Hill wanted a change in perspective from the snowy, hometown peaks of the Coast Mountains, he looked south, found some desert mountains flanked on both sides by ocean, and made the move to Loreto Bay, Baja California Sur, Mexico.
“The smell is the main difference in the mountains here,” Jeff says. “Back in Whistler, that coastal rainforest—when you take a deep breath, you smell the entire forest and everything involved in it. Down here the mountains are so dry, it doesn’t smell hardly at all, only after a rain, and even then it’s nowhere close to the same.”
Those arid mountains are exactly what lured Jeff and his then-partner Tracy south in 2007. At the time, they were long-time Whistler locals looking for change and a place to ride their dirt bikes during the winter months. The Baja Peninsula has been known as a motorized adventure and racing hub since the early 1960s, when American motorcyclist Dave Elkins test-drove his Honda CL72 Scrambler nearly the entire length of the Baja California Sur peninsula—a 1,528-kilometre (950-mile) off-road jaunt from the US border at Tijuana to the Baja capital city of La Paz.
Elkins completed the ride in 39 hours and 56 minutes, and over the next few years others attempted to best his time—on motos, dune buggies and even off-road sedans. In 1967 the unofficial runs were organized into a single event, which persists today as the infamous Baja 1000. The Loreto region has three shorter-distance motorized races throughout the year.
“We loved it right away,” Jeff says. “The race culture was well established—going as fast as possible on dirt roads—but there was almost nobody riding single track.”
Located on the Sea of Cortez/Gulf of California (east side of the Baja) and about three-quarters of the way down the peninsula (343 km north of La Paz), the Loreto region pushes up against the Sierra de la Giganta range, a dry, shrub-covered series of ridges and mountains rising 1,176 metres (3,858 feet) above the coast.
“It feels a bit like a frontier up there; we can cruise around and feel like we’re finding new things.”
“There are game trails and random paths into the mountains,” Jeff says, “and I saw a lot of potential for exploration and fun. It feels a bit like a frontier up there; we can cruise around and feel like we’re finding new things.”
Stoked on that sense of outdoor discovery (and the warm, dry climate), Jeff says the main thing he missed from back home were his friends and that sense of community that generally thrives in mountain towns. “I found a posse of locals to ride with, but I definitely found myself missing the connections and friends I’d made in the Sea to Sky. You can’t build those kinds of friendships in just a year or two. It’s always special when someone comes down to visit.”
So, to entice their old friends down more often—while also recognizing an opportunity to put down roots—they bought a hotel.
“Well, not exactly,” says Jeff. “It wasn’t that simple, and I had some key partners helping out the whole way through. But, essentially, we found a property that was never completed because of the 2008 recession, just a shell of a building but in an area that had originally been planned to become almost like a Whistler-style pedestrian village.
But all my favourite trails were right there, and there are a couple golf courses, and there’s good multi-pitch rock climbing nearby on good basalt. Plus, the five islands surrounding the bay are a national marine park, so there’s paddling, snorkeling and diving, whale watching, good fishing. It really felt like this area checked a lot of the boxes we were looking for.”
“We probably bit off more than we could chew,” Jeff says of the three-year project, despite his having close to three decades of experience in the Whistler construction industry. “Building is different down here. There are challenges getting employees and challenges getting supplies—everything has to come down the peninsula by truck, so what you need is not always available. There was also the fact that, at first, I didn’t speak any Spanish at all.”
With patience and grit, however, the project slowly came to shape and, at the end of 2023, the Aventuras Hotel opened its doors to guests. It’s a 38-room boutique hotel with a fine dining restaurant on the main floor and a chill lounge/bar on the rooftop (next to the pool/hot tub) that’s Jeff’s new favourite spot for sunset views and post-work cocktails.
With construction of the hotel complete, Jeff began focusing back on the mountains and started Aventuras Tours. With high-performance UTV buggies, e-mountain bikes, motos and a boat, a tour company offered him a chance to showcase (and keep exploring) the landscapes that lured him to Loreto in the first place.
“Some days I am a captain, out driving a boat, then the next I’m leading a moto or e-bike tour into the mountains. Then maybe I have to serve drinks that night because we are short-staffed. I didn’t have any experience in tourism before this, so I basically had to learn every job.”
And when a couple of buddies from back home came to visit (Mountain Life co-owner Jon Burak and photographer Jimmy Martinello), Jeff knew exactly where to take them.
“My favourite trip: We take the UTVs up through the mountains and the desert and end up on the Pacific Coast to rip around on the beach then head back. These are high-performance machines, designed for races like the Baja 1000, and we head out for three days in the desert. It’s just all so totally different than anything we have back home.”
Jeff says it feels a bit like a big multi-day snowmobile adventure back home, “but way warmer.” And without as much wildlife. “There are definitely deer and coyote around and the odd rattlesnake, but they are not that abundant,” he says. “It hasn’t rained here in two years so that affects things I think.”
A two-year drought is not typical. Rainy season—when it happens—coincides with the hottest, most humid months, running from July until September or October. Statistically, September is Loreto’s wettest month, with 4.5 centimetres (1.8 inches) of average total rainfall.
“The humidity in the summer is crazy,” Jeff says. “You walk outside and you are immediately soaked. Those are the months for me to come back up to the Sea to Sky. You never realize how nice it is to dive into a lake until you come back from the desert.”
As he gets a handle on the tourism business (“I didn’t know what search engine optimization is…How was I supposed to learn that on a construction site?”), Jeff says he plans to get back to BC soon, but for now his “retirement” career and location keep him busy, happy and keen to keep exploring his new home.
“My soul loves to explore, and the way I see it one of the secrets to life is to experience a lot of different places and things. I know how easy it can be to have a really incredible life in the snowy mountains of Canada, but I have also loved building a new home base here, and being able to share it with people fires me up. I’m not looking too far ahead just yet, but for sure I’ll keep looking for new places to go.”
And, chances are, those places will probably have some sort of mountains, too.
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