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Glacial Aretes

Aretes and Pyramidal Peaks in highland areas are glaciers features usually created by erosion, not deposition. Features such as corries, ribbon lakes, U shaped valleys and hanging valleys are typical of upland areas such as the Alps in Europe, the English Lake District and the Southern Alps in New Zealand. When a corrie is formed, its back and side walls tend to be steep and jagged, perhaps almost vertical. When two corries form next to each other, and their adjacent walls are eroded backwards until they meet, a narrow and pointed rock ridge is formed. This is often likened to a knife edge, with near vertical sides and a sharp top edge. This feature is called an arete. 

Pyramidal Peaks 
When three or more corries erode backwards and meet they cannot form an arete; it has steep sides but doesn't have the length to make a ridge. Imagine three corries at the corners of a triangle, eventually all eroding back and meeting in the middle. A sharp pointed pyramid shape is created. This is called a Pyramidal Peak, or Horn, and is a common shape for mountain tops in well glaciated areas. 

This arête is in the Chamonix Valley, France near Mont Blanc Cirques are created when glaciers erode backwards into mountainsides, creating rounded hollows shaped like a shallow bowls. Aretes are jagged, narrow ridges created where the back walls of two cirque glaciers meet, eroding the ridge on both sides. Horns, such as the famous Matterhorn in Switzerland, are created when several cirque glaciers erode a mountain until all that is left is a steep, pointed peak with sharp, ridge-like aretes leading up to the top.