Aiguilles D’Arves

This visually stunning mountain, Aiguilles D’Arves, located in the Arves Massif, is made up of three-pointed peaks, the largest of which, the Southern Needle, stands at an astonishing 3,514m. The second-highest peak, the Central Needle, was first reached in 1839.

On September 2, 1839, the brothers Pierre Alexis and Benoît Nicolas Magnin, from nearby Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne, climbed the central summit of the Aiguilles d'Arves for the first time. They constructed a cairn and buried two Sardinian coins under a rock on the peak as proof.

Christian and Ulrich Almer, Swiss mountain guides, and their American customer, W. A. B. Coolidge of New York, were the first to reach the southern summit. Coolidge made a number of first ascents and worked extensively in the Dauphiné Alps during the 1870s and 1880s. The same group had previously climbed L'Auguille Centrale in 1874. They discovered the cairn made by the Magnin brothers on the peak but attributed it to "a legendary chamois hunter" Benoît Magnin notified them of his ascent 39 years prior the day after their summit of L'Aiguille Meridionale in 1878.

Elevation: 3,514m
Location: Arves massif, France