Cecilia Llusco Alaña

Cecilia Llusco Alaña (born 1985), an Indigenous Bolivian mountaineer, founder of the Cholitas Escaladoras Bolivianas or Cholita Climbers of Bolivia, has scaled mountains in South America, including Huayna Potosi, a 6,088 meter high peak in Bolivia. She works as one of only about ten Indigenous Aymara women mountaineering guides. Instead of wearing modern technical or thermal mountaineering clothing, she climbs in her Indigenous costume. This includes the pollera, a brightly colored, gathered skirt with many underskirts. She carries her equipment in k'eperinas, or Aguayo, traditionally woven shawls or blankets, carried on her back. Since climbing Huayna Potosi she and the group have gone on to scale higher mountains such as Aconcagua, a 6,961meter peak in Argentina and the highest mountain in the Americas.