[3] In addition to being one of the highest Brazilian mountains, Pedra da Mina is also remarkable for its peculiar history (see below), as in spite of its high elevation and of being located relatively close to densely populated areas, until the turn of the 21st century the mountain was virtually unknown, so was its exact elevation, and its importance was not acknowledged until very recently, showing that even in the 21st century, geographical exploration may still hold surprises.

They chose to approach the range from the much less steep north side, and after a very difficult four-day trek in very cold, wet and misty conditions, the eight men reached the top of Pedra da Mina, which they correctly identified as Serra Fina's highest summit, on 8 July 1955.

[9] Later, the relative isolation of the Serra Fina range, which is uninhabited, traversed by no mountain passes or roads, and surrounded by dense vegetation, made the area little known, poorly mapped, and rarely explored until the end of the 20th century, other than occasional expeditions by members of the small São Paulo Alpine Club, starting from the 1970s.

[5][10] Old maps of the area showed highly discrepant elevation values for Pedra da Mina, from as low as 2,437 metres (7,995 ft) in some aeronautical charts[6][11] to 2,770 metres (9,090 ft) in the 1974 official topographic chart of the area by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), the government institution that holds the authority for all official geographic information in Brazil.

[14] He notified the university, which eventually sent an official expedition the following year with high-precision professional GPS equipment, and found an elevation one metre higher still than Bagini's first measurement.

[3] The fact that the highest point of Brazil's most populous state and of one of the country's most important mountain ranges had been virtually unknown until then caught the country by surprise and was widely reported in the Brazilian press, creating a sensation and a lot of curiosity about it among Brazilian adventurers and mountaineers, who started climbing Pedra da Mina and exploring the Serra Fina range more often.

[5] In 2015, IBGE completed a new and more accurate mapping of the Brazilian territory regarding the geoid, the irregular imaginary surface based on the Earth's gravitational field that is the reference for elevation measurements.

[1][4] Considering that the town of Queluz lies only 14 kilometres (8.7 mi) south of the mountain by a straight line,[15] but the town lies on the Paraíba do Sul river valley only 497 metres (1,631 ft) above sea level,[16] Pedra da Mina's southern (São Paulo) slope has one of the largest and most abrupt differences in elevation in Brazil: 2,301 metres (7,549 ft).

[17] By contrast, because the neighbouring area of Minas Gerais to the north is already a high-elevation hilly plateau,[6] the northern slope is much less steep, and the difference in elevation is much smaller.

The mountain is nearly always climbed from the north (Minas Gerais) side, where the shortest route is through a strenuous one-day hike to the top (with a few steeper scramble sections), camping there overnight and returning the next day, on a well-marked trail that starts at a farm next to the hamlet of Paiolinho, near the town of Passa Quatro, at an elevation of 1,566 metres (5,138 ft); the trailhead can be reached by regular vehicles on a dirt road.

[2] Alternatively, Pedra da Mina can also be reached as a part of a longer (3-5-day) hike on top of the entire crest of Serra Fina, entering the latter by a more westerly trail starting at a farm called Toca do Lobo, also near Passa Quatro, and finishing at the BR-354 highway, which traverses the Garganta do Registro pass between Serra Fina and the Itatiaia Massif.