Fair Head is considered one of the best traditional climbing and bouldering locations in the British Isles, and is one of the biggest expanses of climbable rock in Northwest Europe.

It has one of the largest concentration of extreme-graded routes in the British Isles, and has climbs at E9-grade (e.g. Rathlin Effect), as well as highball problems at E9-grade (e.g. Long runs the Fox), and bouldering at 8B+ (V14) grade (e.g. Blondie SDS).

Wild goats can be seen roaming among the rocks beneath the clifftops, where a walkway called The Grey Man's Path winds around the rugged coastline.

From the road above the cliff, a human-made Iron Age island or crannóg can be seen in the middle of a lake, Lough na Cranagh.

[5] Fair Head's sill is 85 metres (279 ft) thick at its maximum, and consists of columnar-jointed dolerite rock (a medium-grained igneous rock compositionally equivalent to finer-grained basalt) showing crystals of olivine, that intruded into Carboniferous sediments in the north of the outcrop circa 60 million years ago.

[5] Despite the thickness, the heat from the Fair Head sill did not alter the underlying Triassic sandstone, however, shales have been converted to hornfels extending up to 5 metres (16 ft) from the contact.

[5] The distinctive columnar jointing of the dolerite rock is the result of stresses caused by the cooling and solidifying of the melt, and there are minor crush zones associated with later compression.

[9] Fair Head is not regarded as an ideal crag for novice climbers, and the long nature of the routes (averaging over 50 metres, with many up to 100 metres), the requirement for long and intimidating abseils for access in many areas,[10] and the high concentration of E-grade climbs, means that it is ideally a crag for intermediate and even more for expert-level climbers.

Many of the cracks involve hand-jamming (and even full-body jamming), and some climbers tape their hands to protect the skin from the "Fair Head rash".

[4] Walking along the base of the Fair Head crag for any distance is not recommended as the terrain makes it time-consuming and very unpleasant, and therefore for routes in the middle of the crag that are far from the two descent gullies, a 100m abseil rope is advised (with a knot tied at the end of it for safety); several of the main routes have large boulders or metal stakes as abseil points.

Most of these climbs followed loose and dirty chimneys and are rarely repeated today, however, by the end of the sixties development of the crag had started in earnest.

[24][3][29] In 2012, Irish climbing author David Flanagan, ranked Fair Head as one of the best bouldering locations in Ireland, just behind Glendalough in Wicklow.