The Triple Buttress of Coire Mhic Fhearchair is one of the great mountain features in Scotland — three quartzite buttresses set on a sandstone plinth above a loch at the back of a long walk-in. East Buttress takes a direct line up the right-hand one. Gibbs, Backhouse and Mounsey got there first in 1907 and reported “No better rock had been our fortune in all Scotland.”

Beinn Eighe, East Buttress

Difficult / ~200 m of climbing and scrambling at around grade 3 and Diff / quartzite on a sandstone plinth

The route

Reach the foot of the climbing by traversing a narrow ledge above the lower sandstone tier — not technically hard, but exposed, and worth the rope for anyone who would rather not think about it.

Then, roughly:

   
~80 m Steep climbing
40 m Scrambling
15 m Crux corner
40 m Scrambling
4 m Crux crack
20 m Scrambling to the plateau

So it is two short hard bits separated by a lot of easier ground — about four to five pitches if you rope the climbing, and moving together for the rest. It tops out on the Coinneach Mhòr plateau on the Beinn Eighe ridgeline.

Boots and wet rock

The holds are the reason both of your notes work: large holds throughout make it climbable in good boots or approach shoes, and big holds are also what makes greasy rock tolerable — there is little to slip off. That is the opposite of a slabby, friction-dependent route like Observatory Ridge, where wet rock changes the proposition entirely.

Two honest caveats. The climbing is on quartzite, which is the rock that goes greasy in the wet on Liathach and An Teallach, and guided descriptions of this route lean towards wanting it dry. So treat “doable when wet” as this route tolerates wet better than its neighbours, not that conditions are irrelevant — and the exposed entry ledge is the place where wet would matter most.

Logistics

  • Park at the Beinn Eighe car park on the A896, just west of the bridge over the Allt a’ Choire Dhuibh Mhòir — 6 miles from Kinlochewe, 4 from Torridon village. This is the same car park as the Coire Dubh Mòr approach.
  • Approach: an excellent stalkers’ path for about 7 km around the west side of Beinn Eighe, past Sàil Mhòr, to Loch Coire Mhic Fhearchair. For calibration, Walkhighlands rates the there-and-back walk to the corrie alone at 14 km / 540 m / 3.5–5 hours — so budget a long day once the climbing is added.
  • Descent: from the top, a short walk along the ridge, then down the south flank of Beinn Eighe to rejoin the approach path back to the car. In summer there is a bypass path through the grass about 50 m below the top of Coinneach Mhòr.

It is a genuine round from one car — no shuttle, no road walk.

Notes

  • Doable when wet, and can be done in walking boots.
  • Summer and winter are different routes here. The summer rock route is Difficult; in winter it is grade IV.
  • The lower tier is Torridonian sandstone, the buttresses above are quartzite. The route climbs the quartzite.