A sudden storm drowns out the crunching of footsteps on the ice and causes skirts to billow in the freezing night.

Ten indigenous Aymara women slowly walk up a Bolivian mountainside in their traditional dress as a sign of their emancipation.

The Climbing Cholitas of Bolivia Warmis is a group that advocates for indigenous women’s rights through mountaineering.

Cecilia Llusco, 36, is the daughter of a mountain guide and has dreamed since she was young of climbing the snow-capped Huayna Potosi, which rises over 6,000 meters above sea level.

However, for many years she limited herself to cooking for other mountaineers and packing their backpacks.

Until she and several other country women, including some of her sisters, decided to change their fortunes.

“Why can’t we climb mountains?” She said they wondered while eliciting dismissive reactions from some men.

“What are these women doing here on the mountain?” Llusco remembers them saying.

Seven years after their first expedition and after climbing nearly a dozen peaks in Bolivia, Peru and Argentina, the Cholita Climbers, named after indigenous Bolivian women nicknamed “Colas” or “Cholitas”, take Huayna again on this Australian winter night Potosi attacking.

And they didn’t compromise on their style.

“We wanted to show that women are strong and brave, that we can do it with our clothes,” said LLusco, who wears her hair in long braids decorated with brown wool.

Whenever they can, and often aided by funding from NGOs and private companies, they hire a minivan to travel two hours from their homes in El Alto — the satellite overlooking La Paz — to the ice wall they want to scale.

There are 14 members and every time they climb they share an “aptapi” – a banquet where everyone brings something to eat.

After resting for a few hours in a refuge, the cholitas get up at 11:00 p.m. and start donning their traditional colored pleated skirts called polleras.

A motley crew of handymen, porters and guides, they begin their ascent of the glacier at midnight to reach the summit by sunrise.

Over their wool clothing they wear the typical mountaineering equipment: helmets, crampons, ice axes, boots and leggings.

But instead of a backpack, they carry their gear in a traditional cloth sack that they sling over their shoulders and tie around their necks.

“There was a lot of discrimination against the Pollera woman,” Llusco said, pointing out that according to international organizations, the feminicide rate in Bolivia is the highest in South America.

Indigenous peoples, who make up nearly half of Bolivia’s population, have long been marginalized.

In the darkness of the night all that is visible is an ant-like row of lanterns illuminating the ice on either side.

One by one, the cholitas clip onto a safety harness and carefully dig their crampons into the ice to avoid falling 100 feet into a chasm.

Oxygen levels drop and temperatures drop to minus 10 degrees Celsius.

In the distance, 30 kilometers away, the lights of El Alto are visible.

With the first light of day, the copper-colored faces of these women between 18 and 42 years old become visible.

As a few snow-capped peaks pierce the low-lying clouds, several cholitas stop to snap photos with their cellphones of the morning sun punctuating spectacular landscapes.

The extreme altitude brings headaches and stomach aches, which the cholitas try to relieve by chewing coca and chocolate leaves.

Nearing the summit, two exhausted climbers decide they’ve had enough and give up.

The last path is steep and narrow. Hanging on a rope, they slowly push themselves forward.

At the top it’s all smiles, hugs and dancing.

“When we get to the top of the mountain, it’s like we’re flying between clouds,” said Llusco.

Her daughter Camila Tarqui, a new recruit, says she likes “how the Pollera flutters” at this altitude.

“You can almost touch a star if you come up here at night,” she said.

On a plain a few meters below the summit, the cholitas are playing a game of soccer.

High-altitude soccer is nothing new in Bolivia, whose national team plays their games in La Paz on the world’s highest pitch used for international matches.

After climbing the highest peak in South America – Aconcagua in Argentina – in 2019, the Cholitas now dream of conquering Mount Everest.

“We women have broken down several barriers… and we want to go further and always carry Aymara culture high,” Llusco said.