Mario Ruiz: The Eternal Legacy of Cerro Catedral’s Patrol Chief. Ski Patrol Bariloche

Some men do not merely inhabit the mountain; they become part of its geography. Mario Ruiz was one of them. He was never a passing tourist or a weekend skier; he was the steady heartbeat of Cerro Catedral for thirty years—the sentinel who knew every pocket of powder and every treacherous ice patch as intimately as the floorboards of his own home.

From the Workshop to the Summit

His journey at Catedral didn't begin with podiums or cameras. It started with the scent of motor grease and the clatter of tools. Mario began in the maintenance department, a young man from Bariloche’s Barrio Alto fixing the machines that others rode. But the mountain has a curious way of calling its chosen ones. He learned to ski out of necessity and stayed for devotion. Soon, his peers noticed that his commitment didn't end at the punch-clock; his gaze was always fixed upward, toward the ridge, where the safety of thousands rests on the judgment of a few.

The Leader Who Cleared the Path

For a decade, Mario led the Patrol. But he never led from a desk. To him, being the Chief meant being the first to click into his bindings at 6:00 AM, when the wind cuts like a knife and the snow accumulated overnight waits, silent and heavy, to be tested.

Mario was a master of nivometeorology—that uncertain science that tries to decipher when the mountain is about to roar. His colleagues, men and women hardened by the cold, remember him as the leader who built knowledge collectively. He was the one who, with warmth and respect, welcomed the first female patrol officers, breaking the ice of prejudice with the same resolve he used to open a trail after a blizzard.

The White Trap

On July 27, 2020, "his own backyard" laid an ambush. An avalanche—that ancestral force that no satellite can fully tame—caught him in the northern sector. Those who were there say the mountain doesn't warn; it simply happens. Mario died "in his law," working so that others could ski safely, giving everything he had in the place he loved most.

His absence in 2026 remains an echo in the ski lifts. It is felt in Aspen, where he left friends and lessons, and it is felt in Bariloche, where his legacy lives in every patrolman who today, before dawn, adjusts his gear and looks toward the summit.

Mario Ruiz never truly left. Every time a patrol triggers a preventative blast to secure a slope, or every time a rescuer offers a word of comfort to the injured, Mario is there. He has become part of the white wind—the invisible guardian watching over Catedral from the place where the snow never melts.