Ice-climbing with Bolivia's cholitas—on this rare adventure tour, only women need apply

Were it not for Liita and her sister Estrella, I’d see nothing but white. Glaciar Viejo — the ‘old glacier’ — rises above me to meet a clouded sky. In a sea of ice and snow, our Aymara climbing guides Ana Lía Gonzáles Magueño (Liita) and Estrella Gonzáles Magueño dazzle in Barbie-pink helmets and large mustard-yellow skirts. With each swing of their axe and jab of their crampons, their shiny, waist-length black braids — tied with knitted flowers — and billowing skirts sway, flashing layers of turquoise and pearl-coloured petticoats to the wind.

It’s 9am in Bolivia’s Cordillera Real, a serrated mountain range in the Andes, and I’m anxiously waiting to climb my first vertical ice wall. I’m on a women-only trekking and ice-climbing expedition with Thread Caravan, a female-owned travel company that partners with Las Cholitas Escaladoras. It’s a group of Aymara women who climb in their traditional clothing, including aguayos — brightly woven fabric used to carry essentials — and voluminous pleated skirts known as polleras. The Aymara are an Indigenous people of the Andes, best known for their deep spiritual connection to the mountains. The trip offers a rare opportunity to experience these high-altitude landscapes through their eyes — and to connect with a community that’s traditionally been closed to outsiders.

“At first, we wore the polleras on the mountain because it’s what we had,” says Liita. “It was hard because the pollera is heavy, and with crampons it was dangerous. But we didn’t want to leave it behind — it’s who we are.”

Worn by Aymara and Quechua women from the Andean highlands, polleras date back to the Spanish conquest in the 16th century, when Indigenous women were forced to wear European-style peasant dresses. For generations, the skirt was an object of deepest racial and social discrimination. Women who wore polleras became known as cholas — a colonial slur for Indigenous women, especially those seen as poor or low-status — and were often then denied entry to restaurants, hotels and even parts of the capital La Paz. “No one wanted to be seen as Indigenous back then, so we dressed like Spanish women,” says Liita. “But now we wear it to show the world who we are.”

In the 1990s and early 2000s, Aymara and Quechua women, particularly those from La Paz and the neighbouring city of El Alto, began reclaiming the pollera — and the diminutive of the term chola, cholita — as symbols of Indigenous pride. In Bolivia, more than half the population identifies as Indigenous. Along with the manta (shawl), sombrero (bowler hat) and elaborate jewellery, today the pollera is worn not just on the streets of La Paz and El Alto, but on fashion runways, in wrestling rings, skate parks and, in Liita and Estrella’s case, on some of the highest peaks in the Andes. “People think we’re crazy for wearing polleras to the summit,” says Liita with a laugh. “We’ve had to come up with our own climbing technique so the fabric doesn’t get caught in our crampons.”

Ropes and anchors secured, it’s my turn on the ice wall. I’m trembling, taking baby steps over the ice towards Liita so she can clip me to the safety rope. I look up: the wall stretches vertically for at least 30 metres and the ice is slushy from yesterday’s warm temperatures. Still, I can’t help but admire the beauty of it all: up close, the glacier isn’t white at all, but a mosaic of turquoise crevasses threaded with veins of ash-grey rock. To my right, glistening icicles — some of them metres long — cling from a rock face like a frozen waterfall, tumbling down into a valley of boggy grass and silver meltwater pools. All around, the Cordillera’s jagged granite peaks ring the horizon.

“Remember your training,” Liita says, watching me loop a figure of eight knot in my harness with shaking hands. She hands me an ice axe with an encouraging smile, her pollera rippling in the wind like ocean waves. I swing the axe with everything I’ve got, hoping it’s enough to keep me upright.

Back to the beginning

Our journey to Glaciar Viejo begins eight days earlier, in El Alto. The largely Aymara city is perched on a plateau above La Paz at 4,150 metres, and is known for its sprawling markets and striking neo-Andean buildings called cholets. A blend of the words ‘chola’ and ‘chalet’, these colourful multi-storey homes — pioneered by Aymara architect Freddy Mamani and decorated with Indigenous motifs — have become a symbol of Aymara pride and prosperity in the city. We meet Liita, Estrella and their mother, Dora Magueño Machaca, our cook for the week, and drive towards Condoriri National Park, a protected reserve of glacial lakes and 5,000-metre-plus peaks less than two hours from the city.

Tarmac and city traffic are swapped for an empty dirt road, and we start to pass black and brown alpacas grazing on golden grasslands. An Aymara woman in a pollera washes clothes in the river beside a mud house circled by a stone wall, its chimney puffing wood smoke. Ahead, the white crest of Huayna Potosí — the 6,088-metre peak in Cordillera Real that we’ll be hiking to over the next week — rises in the distance, its sheer western face gleaming in the afternoon light.

We leave our minivan at 4,500 metres and begin the hike into Condoriri National Park. The air feels thinner straight away; my lungs work harder and my steps feel sluggish, even on gentle ground. A faint headache starts behind my eyes — a reminder that hiking at this altitude is a totally different ball game. The trail winds through slate-grey mountains stitched with yellow moss and streams so clear I can see their gravelly bottoms. Viscacha rodents dart between the rocks; a flock of chestnut Andean ducks skim a glacial lake.

After a couple of hours we crest a ridge and see Lake Chiarkhota below us, a glassy lagoon cradled by the jagged peaks of Condoriri, a chain of mountains shaped like a bird in flight. “They say these mountains were once a giant condor, frozen into stone,” Liita tells me. She traces the bird’s head, the large central peak known as Cabeza del Cóndor, and its outstretched wings — the two adjacent summits — with her index finger. Liita was raised among those mountains — her parents have been guiding climbers in the Cordillera Real for over 30 years. But it wasn’t until 2015 that she summited her first peak, Huayna Potosí. She did it with 11 other Aymara women, including her mother Dora, all wearing polleras. They called themselves Las Cholitas Escaladoras — the climbing cholitas.

“When we reached the summit that day, I felt I could do anything,” says Liita. “It was like a force inside me, as if the mountain itself told me I was strong.” Since that first climb, the Cholitas Escaladoras have gone on to summit many of Bolivia’s highest peaks and, in 2019, Liita and five other cholitas reached the top of Aconcagua in Argentina, the highest mountain in the Americas at just under 7,000 metres. “The mountain taught me there’s no limit,” she says. “If we can reach the summit, we can also achieve other things in life.”

Just before sunset, we reach our first refugio — a pair of stone huts with a corrugated roof perched at the edge of Lake Chiarkhota. Inside, Dora is already at the gas stove, chopping radishes and pink-hued Andean potatoes for tonight’s vegetable soup. The room is bare: slate walls painted pastel pink, a single white bulb hanging from exposed wiring and child-sized mattresses lined along the wall. The cold bites at my face.

“People are always amazed how good my food is,” says Dora, her blueberry-coloured pollera bobbing up and down from a belly laugh. Married to climbing guide Agustín González, Dora joined the family business as the expedition cook 30 years ago. But it wasn’t until 10 years ago — at the age of 50 — that she summited her first mountain. She’s now made it to the top of all of Bolivia’s highest peaks and has plans to climb Mont Blanc in the French Alps later this year.

“The first time I climbed was out of curiosity, just to see if I could,” she tells me, flashing a silver-toothed grin, chewed coca leaf — a native Andean plant the Aymara have used for centuries to combat altitude sickness and boost energy — stuffed beneath her upper lip. “I went up with boots that were too big, but I made it. After that, I wanted to conquer more summits.” As she adds carrots and parsley to the soup, her pink-rimmed glasses fog with steam.

Orphaned young, with no formal education and living with poor eyesight, mountaineering wasn’t an easy pursuit for Dora. “I’ve felt discrimination because of my age, for not knowing how to read and for my eyes,” she says. “But the mountain doesn’t discriminate. Every time I climb, I feel stronger inside. For me, the mountains are also family. It’s where I’ve found my friends, my sisters, my reason for being.”

Before we sit down to eat, our group huddles around a small wooden table inside the refugio, packed shoulder to shoulder to keep warm. There are women from Japan, Mexico, France, the US and the UK, all with very different lives back home, yet conversation flows freely between us and the cholitas. There’s a relaxed intimacy here, with the kind of trust that may not have surfaced in a mixed group — stories swap back and forth about mountains, motherhood, and hopes and dreams for the future.

The Aymara — particularly women — have historically been a private community, and travellers have rarely had the chance to get to know their lives up close. But here, huddled in a stone hut at 4,700 metres, sharing soup and coca leaf tea with no internet or phone signal, the usual distance dissipates. It feels like a rare privilege to be invited into their world.

That night, as I step outside, the snowy peaks of Condoriri seem to touch the sky. The stars shimmer on the lake’s surface, so clear it feels as if the Milky Way has spilled into the water. For a moment I lose my bearings: I’m surrounded by stars above and below, as though suspended in space. The temperature has plunged to -10C, but I linger in the bitter cold, marvelling at the universe sprawled around me.

Embracing Pachamama

The next morning, we gather by the lake’s edge to perform a challa, an offering to Pachamama for our safe passage over Condoriri Pass. Among the Aymara, Pachamama is revered as Mother Earth — the life-giving force that provides land, water and crops — and her blessing is sought before travelling into the mountains.

At 5,000 metres above sea level, higher than almost any mountain in Europe, the pass will be our first big challenge. We place coca leaves, a splash of alcohol and a small black ball of sugar mixed with ash and water, which Dora calls lejía, on the earth. The ritual complete, Dora, Liita and Estrella cry “Jallalla!” — an Aymara word of celebration loosely translating to ‘long live’ or ‘may it be so’ — and embrace us one by one.

The trail to Condoriri Pass climbs steeply from the lake, zigzagging over boggy grassland and patches of ice for three brutal hours. Estrella walks beside me, adjusting the crocheted flowers that bind her braids — deep purple kantutas, the national flower of Bolivia, which she embroidered by hand. Her woven aguayo, which Estrella jokingly refers to as her “Osprey backpack”, is draped across her shoulders, its bright threads catching the mountain light.

She’s 34 now, but Estrella took her first steps on these mountains as a teenager. “At first I joined because my sister was climbing,” she says. “I wanted to see if I could do it too.” By 2016, she had summited Huayna Potosí; in 2019 she qualified as a trekking guide; and, in 2021, she became one of the first Bolivian women certified as a high-altitude climbing guide.

“It was so difficult,” Estrella recalls of her training, which was completed in Bolivia. “We had to bivouac in the snow at sub-zero temperatures and climb through the night. And then there were the men who didn’t think I could do it.” At the time, she was also raising two young children on her own — a fact that made some climbers underestimate her even more. Some tried to carry her equipment, convinced she couldn’t manage on her own; others ignored her, or laughed. Some instructors singled her out, waking her earlier or pushing her harder than the rest. But one lesson stayed with her. “One of my teachers told me: the mountain doesn’t care if you’re a man or a woman — it will treat you the same.”

The trail grows steeper. At 5,000 metres, the wind howling, we crest Condoriri Pass, with the snowy crown of Huayna Potosí gleaming in the distance. Barely out of breath, Estrella scans the horizon and spots a white-throated hawk circling for mice. We begin our descent into the valley below, where the palette shifts from white snow and black volcanic rock to coffee browns, mustard yellows and moss green. Alpaca trails criss-cross the slopes into boggy grassland gurgling with trickling streams. Estrella tells me her children run up these valleys and mountains with her, calling them home. “The mountain has taught me resistencia — to endure, to keep going, to be strong. It’s made me a better mother and a stronger woman,” she says.

We reach Tuni, a small alpaca-herding community with low brick and mud houses topped with corrugated iron. We’re staying at Albergue Tuni, a guesthouse owned and run by 43-year-old Marisol Poma Quispe, who’s lived here for 25 years. She greets us in a purple pollera, sparkly silver pumps and a lilac crochet jumper beneath a matching pinafore. A wide cream sunhat shades most of her face, but when she smiles, her gold teeth glint in the light.

The next morning, she catches me in the courtyard sipping a coca leaf tea. A pig is tied up and dozens of cuy (guinea pigs) scuttle at my feet. Behind me, Huayna Potosí looms over the village, its snowy peak blushing pink with the sunrise. “Do you want to help get the alpacas out?” she asks. Before I can answer, she’s striding towards the enclosure. “You take mine, I’ll get my neighbour’s llamas. We’ll meet at the top of the hill.”

Suddenly, all 93 of her alpacas are staring at me, waiting for instruction. I glance at Marisol, who’s swinging a piece of wool above her head and hissing ‘ksssh’ at the llamas next door. I copy her movements as best I can and, to my relief, the herd slowly begins to shuffle up the hillside, humming and clucking as they go. At the top of the hill, Marisol smiles and says, “I’m very happy when tourists come.”

We watch the animals fan out across the slope. “Our ancestors left us this land. We should stay here to protect it and pass it on. Thanks to guests, we can live with our animals and keep our Aymara traditions.” Climbing and trekking tourism has even brought running water to the village, thanks to a project completed in 2012. “Some French climbers saw us drinking from the river,” she recalls. “They helped us build a system and now we have clean water.”

Into the ice

From Tuni, we drive to the entrance of Huayna Potosí and begin the ascent to High Camp, perched at 5,250 metres. The terrain is more challenging here than Condoriri: giant boulders and slabs of rock are piled together as if dropped from the sky, each one balanced precariously over steep drop-offs, like a giant game of Jenga. A faint path threads between them, but it becomes steeper and less defined the higher we climb. As snow clouds roll in, visibility drops and the temperature plummets, each breath cutting sharper than the last.

Every step feels uncertain now, as though the whole mountain might shift if I place my boot wrong. Higher up, patches of snow and ice slick the rocks, forcing me to stash my trekking poles and use my hands to scramble over the final hundred metres. It’s a long way down if I slip.

When I finally straighten up at the top, the view takes me by surprise. Las Rocas refugio clings to a rocky ledge, with Huayna Potosí’s snowline pressing against one side and a sheer cliff plunging away on the other. We’re above the clouds now: distant peaks pierce a blanket of white, their silhouettes stretching endlessly across the horizon. Beyond them lie the forested Yungas — Bolivia’s Amazon — and behind us, the amber glow of El Alto’s lights.

Estrella and Liita tell me Las Rocas refugio was built by their family in the early 2000s and took two years to finish, every stone and wooden beam hauled up by hand. Before that, climbers had no choice but to camp if they wanted to reach the summit. Today, its triangular roof resembles something between a mountain hut in the Alps and a small village church, sunlight flooding the large dormitory through angled windows. A long wooden table runs the length of the dining room, where hand-drawn maps and scrawled messages from past climbers line the walls — notes from those who reached the summit, and those who turned back.

“In Aymara, Huayna Potosí means young mountain,” Estrella tells me over dinner. “It’s younger than other peaks here, so I think it welcomes people more. It wants to help climbers reach the top, so they can go on to visit its older siblings and parents — the bigger mountains beyond.” For the Aymara, mountains are considered living beings — the children or spirits of Pachamama herself — so it’s natural that Estrella speaks of Huayna Potosí as if it were a friendly relative.

We spend the next two days at High Camp, acclimatising to the altitude and practising with ice axes and crampons on a small glacier nearby. This trip is an introduction to mountaineering, so we won’t attempt the summit of Huayna Potosí. Instead, we’ll climb a section of Glaciar Viejo — enough to experience ice underfoot, and to glimpse what lies ahead if I ever return for the summit.

It’s a short, unsteady walk across the bottom of the glacier to reach the wall. Liita has roped me in and I take my first swings at the 30-metre sheet of ice. After only a few metres I’m already gasping; at this altitude, every swing feels like moving through water. My arms tremble. My lungs burn.

Halfway up, both my feet slip. Suddenly I’m dangling by my arms, shards of ice crashing below as I kick my legs frantically. I consider giving up, but I remember Liita’s parting words — remember your training — and I force my crampons back into the wall, inching upward again.

Finally, somehow, I reach the top. I’m shaking, but I force myself to look away from the ice. The glacier unfurls in sensuous white, grey and turquoise-hued curves, spilling onto the tundra below like icing on a cake. Beyond it, snowy peaks, including Huayna Potosí, stretch to the horizon. For a moment, I imagine what it might feel like to stand on one of them, as Dora, Liita and Estrella have done.

Up here, I think I understand what draws these women back to the mountains. Despite the cold, fear and exhaustion — not to mention  the social and economic barriers they face as Indigenous women — there’s something quite special about standing at the edge of the world, and realising what you’re truly capable of.

“The mountain has taught me to be a woman who dreams big.” Liita’s words ring in my ears as I call for her to belay me back down. “Because to climb mountains is a dream.”