The cartographer Timothy Pont visited the Loch Maree area when producing his series of maps of Scotland in the late sixteenth century, including a sketch of Coire Mhic Fhearchair on his maps, however there is little evidence of any recorded visits to the summits of Beinn Eighe prior to the nineteenth century. The earliest recorded ascent appears to have been during surveying of the boundary between the Gairloch and Torridon Estates, which surveyor George Campbell Smith was required to determine and delineate in 1851.