Armand Charlet

He taught at ENSA, the French national school of ski and alpinism, for many years and had a great influence on several generations of high-mountain guides. He was technical director of the school for twelve years from 1945.

He was the central character in À l'assaut des aiguilles du Diable (Marcel Ichac, 1942), a mountain film that Engel rates as "little short of a masterpiece".

He made 3,000 ascents and guided over 1,200 friends and clients – of whom a third were women. He specialised in ascents of the Aiguille Verte in the Mont Blanc massif, which he climbed 100 times by fourteen different routes, including seven first ascents, among them the direct line on the Couturier couloir, climbed on 1 July 1932 with Alfred Couttet and Georges Devouassoux. He also made the first ascent of the wildly pinnacled Aiguilles du Diable. In 1928 he made the first attempt on the north face of the Grandes Jorasses, one of the six great north faces of the Alps, via the Croz Spur. His party did not use pitons or any artificial devices and did not progress far up the face. He made another unsuccessful attempt in 1934 with Robert Greloz, a guide from Chamonix, reaching 11,800 ft on the face and, according to Gaston Rébuffat, "[causing] quite a stir at the time".

As a guide he also made first ascents with his clients; for example, on 4 August 1928 Charlet led Miriam O'Brien and Robert L. M. Underhill on the first traverse from the Aiguilles du Diable to Mont Blanc du Tacul, during which he overcame a Grade V pitch on L'Isolée with a jammed ice axe (today a piton is in place).

Armand Charlet (9 February 1900, Argentière – December 1975) was a French mountaineer and mountain guide.