Alpine 4,000ers

The 82 four-thousanders

In 1994 the UIAA — the international mountaineering federation — published an official list of Alpine summits of 4,000 meters or more, settling decades of argument over which bumps and pinnacles counted. The rule was 30 meters of prominence plus a judgment about mountaineering significance; the result was 82 peaks, all of them in Switzerland, Italy, and France. Mont Blanc heads the list at 4,809 meters; Les Droites closes it at exactly 4,000.

Climbing all 82 is a life's work. Many are serious alpine routes — the Matterhorn's Hörnli Ridge, the Eiger's Mittellegi, the Dent Blanche, the Grandes Jorasses — and a few, like the Aiguille Blanche de Peuterey, are among the hardest summits in the Alps to reach. But the list also includes Breithorn, Allalinhorn, and the Bishorn, which are short snow climbs from a cable car and are most people's first four-thousander. A handful of climbers have done the whole list in a single season; Liv Sansoz did it in under a year, largely by paraglider and skis.

Massif by massif

The badges here are grouped west to east by massif. The Mont Blanc group alone has 28 summits, many of them on the Italian side above Courmayeur. The Valais — Monte Rosa, the Mischabel, the Matterhorn and Weisshorn — holds the bulk of the Swiss ones, with the Monte Rosa hut the most productive base on the whole list. The Bernese Oberland has nine, including the Jungfrau, Mönch, and Finsteraarhorn; the Écrins in France and Piz Bernina in the east are the outliers.

Click a badge or its pin to mark a summit, again for want-to-climb. The map frames the peaks against the national borders, which matters here — several of the summits are the border.

Huts, guides, and seasons

The Alpine four-thousanders are hut-to-hut mountains. Almost every normal route starts from a Swiss, Italian, or French Alpine Club hut at 2,800 to 3,600 meters, with dinner, bunks, and a 3 a.m. start; the Monte Rosa, Hörnli, Goûter, and Conscrits huts are as much a part of the list as the summits. The season is late June to mid-September for most routes, with the rock climbs better in August and the snow routes better earlier. Guides are the norm rather than the exception on the harder peaks — the Matterhorn in particular is climbed with a Zermatt guide by most people who climb it at all.