Houdini Needles is part of the Adamant Range which is a subrange of the Selkirk Mountains.

Precipitation runoff and glacial meltwater from the mountain drains to Kinbasket Lake via Smith Creek.

Topographic relief is significant as the summit rises 1,560 metres (5,418 ft) above Smith Creek in 3 km (1.9 mi).

The mountain's toponym was officially adopted on March 4, 1965, by the Geographical Names Board of Canada.

[2] The mountain was named by William Lowell Putnam III who explained "When we first saw them from the Echo Glacier they looked so impressive and impossible that we decided only Houdini could get them...."[3] Putnam, along with Andrew Kauffman, Benjamin Ferris and Henry Pinkham, were the members of the party who made the first ascent of the peaks in 1948.