HardRidge · Killarney

An Sliabh Corcra
and Na Tóimí.

Purple Mountain from the Head of the Gap, then north along the ridge to the summit cairn on Tomies, and down to Kate Kearney’s Cottage.

Also known as Purple Mountain and Tomies.

DISTANCE

9.07km

ASCENT

718m

HIGH POINT

827m

My time 4 hr 49 · a steep climb, loose slate on the summits and a long, steep descent GRADE GUIDE ↗

Reading the map…

INTERACTIVE TERRAIN · ACTUAL GPX TRACKACTUAL GPX TRACK

A recorded time is not a planning estimate. Build your own from pace, ascent, ground, weather and daylight.

GPX EMERGENCY

01 · DECIDE

Is this your day?

ELEVATION PROFILE

Most of the climbing is done in the first 2.6 km.

The profile climbs steadily from the Head of the Gap to the top of Purple Mountain, rolls along the ridge to Tomies, then drops almost 700 m to the finish.

Reading the forecast

718 m ascent · 901 m descent

THE LINE

Two heaps of stone on Tomies.

The route climbs east from the Head of the Gap, past a small lake, onto the bare slate top of Purple Mountain. From there it follows the ridge north over the North-East Top to Tomies, then drops a long way down to Kate Kearney’s Cottage at the mouth of the Gap. It runs one way, so you need a lift between the ends or the road back through the Gap.

Named for the slate

Early visitors put the colour down to heather, or to a small plant with purple flowers. George Newenham Wright disagreed in his 1822 guide to Killarney. He said writers had copied the idea from each other without looking. In strong sun, he wrote, the loose, broken stones on the summit reflect a purple colour, and that is the cause. In 1837 Samuel Lewis agreed: the mountain was named for the colour of the shattered slate on its surface.

The name is younger than the mountain’s other one. Charles Smith’s history of Kerry in 1756 calls the whole massif Tomish or Toomish. Paul Tempan suggests the English name took over in the nineteenth century, and Tomies was left to the lower peak to the north. He also suggests An Sliabh Corcra is the Ordnance Survey translating the English back into Irish, not an older Irish name.

The cairns on Tomies

P. W. Joyce gave the Irish for Tomies as Tuamaidhe and tied it to the two burial heaps of stone on the summit. The Placenames Database records the mountain as Na Tóimí, the name used on the wood below it.

The two heaps are still there. My line crosses the larger one, on the summit of Tomies. The Archaeological Survey describes a flat-topped, roughly oval cairn about 12 m across and up to 1.9 m high, with stone spilled down every side but the north-west. On that side is a small circular shelter, 2.6 m across.

The second cairn is about 300 m east, on a lower top that my line passes about 250 m away. The Survey describes it as small and rectangular, and of dubious antiquity. Both may be the two sepulchral heaps of stone that Cusack noted on the summit in 1871.

01Head of the GapLeave the road at about 240 m and climb east, past a small lake at about 500 m.
02Purple MountainThe climb steepens onto the slate dome. My track reaches 827 m at the summit cairn, 2.6 km in.
03The ridge to TomiesFollow the ridge north over the North-East Top to the large summit cairn on Tomies, 4.7 km in.
04Down to Kate Kearney’sDescend north over the lower shoulder and down to Kate Kearney’s Cottage at the road.

The Irish names are from the Placenames Database: An Sliabh Corcra and Na Tóimí, which also gives Cathair as the name of the top itself. Lewis, Smith and Joyce (Irish Names of Places, vol. I, p. 336) are quoted in Paul Tempan’s Irish Hill and Mountain Names, under Purple Mountain and Tomies Mountain. Wright’s account of the colour is in A Guide to the Lakes of Killarney (London, 1822), pp. 85–86. The cairns are Archaeological Survey records KE074-013 and KE074-014, from O’Sullivan and Sheehan’s survey of Iveragh (1996), nos. 390 and 391; the distances are measured from their recorded coordinates to my track. The wood on the lower slopes is the Coill na dTóimí walk, and the hill across the Gap is Cnoc na dTarbh.

Forecast for around 830 m

Reading the forecast…

NOW

WIND

TODAY’S PEAK RAIN CHANCE

PLANNING FORECAST · AROUND 830 M

Reading the forecast…

–cloud

–humidity

–km/h peak gust

Strongest wind today–

Peak gust–

RECENT RAINFALL · LIKELY GROUND

RAIN, GUST & VISIBILITY WINDOW

BEST HIKING WINDOW

DAYLIGHT PLAN

MET ÉIREANN · KERRY

NEXT SIX HOURS · swipe

Reading the forecast

Forecast. This is a modelled estimate for this route’s high ground; conditions can differ sharply across the mountain. Derived from Open-Meteo forecast data ↗.

HAZARDS & OPTIONSKnow the commitment.

The summits and the ridge are covered in loose, broken slate. It shifts underfoot and is slippery when wet.

The descent from Tomies to Kate Kearney’s Cottage loses about 670 m. It is long and steep, and hard on the knees.

The western side of the ridge falls steeply into the Gap. In cloud, navigate carefully and keep to the planned line.

The tops are exposed to wind, and cloud can come down quickly.

Before Purple Mountain’s summit, the simplest retreat is back down the way you came to the Head of the Gap. Once on the ridge, decide early whether to go on to Tomies or go back. Do not try a shortcut down the steep western side into the Gap.

PURPLE MOUNTAIN AND TOMIES

My photographs.

18 photographsSwipe and tap to enlarge from the walk · select to enlarge

Morning mist lying in a valley below sunlit mountain slopes — 01Mist below the start

A large boulder topped with heather on the hillside, with mist in the valley beyond — 02Above the mist

A small dark lake between rocky banks, with mountains on the horizon — 03The small lake on the climb

Mountain ridges across a deep valley, with mist in the lowlands and a sunlit slope in front — 04Mountains beyond the mist

A rounded summit covered in grey slate, rising against a blue sky — 05The slate dome of Purple Mountain

Broken slate in the foreground with the Reeks rising beyond — 06The Reeks over the slate

A walker standing beside a cairn on a slate summit, with mountains beyond — 07At the summit cairn

A cairn of slate on the summit, with a ridge of rounded tops leading towards flat lowlands and a lake — 08Along the ridge from the summit

A steep grassy slope in the foreground with the jagged ridges of the Reeks beyond — 09The Reeks from the ridge

A pointed peak rising above slate-strewn ground, with more mountains beyond — 10Looking back along the ridge

A cairn of stacked slate with a thin upright slab beside it, and peaks beyond — 11A cairn on the ridge

Sharp mountain peaks and ridges above a brown valley floor — 12Peaks across the Gap

A broad heap of grey slate stones in the foreground, with mountains beyond — 13The summit cairn on Tomies

A mountain falling steeply to a small lake on a valley floor, with higher peaks behind — 14Down into the Gap

The sun low over a rocky summit, with a stony path through heather leading up to it — 15Into the sun on Tomies

A cairn on a slate summit with the Reeks on the horizon — 16An earlier walk, March 2022

Two walkers on a broad slate ridge, with the Reeks beyond — 17Walkers on the slate

A tall upright stone slab set in a cairn, with green mountains and cloud beyond — 18An upright slab on a cairn

03 · GO

Getting there.

Start well.

STARTHead of the Gap, Gap of Dunloe

Select coordinates to copy

The route starts at the Head of the Gap, at the top of the Gap of Dunloe road, and finishes at Kate Kearney’s Cottage at the northern end. The two ends are about 6 km apart on the road through the Gap. Arrange a lift between them, or walk the road back to make a full loop of about 15 km. I have not recorded that road section, so it is not in the GPX or the figures. The Gap road is narrow and shared with walkers, cyclists and jaunting cars. Confirm a legal place to park, and keep the road, gates and entrances clear.

ROUTE FILE

Take the route with you.

My recording runs one way, from the Head of the Gap to Kate Kearney’s Cottage. The road back through the Gap is not in the file.

Distance and heights come from the GeoJSON track. The time comes from the matching 588-point GPX I recorded on 17 October 2026 and exported on 19 October. That GPX has no heights, so the profile uses the GeoJSON.

Download original GPXan-sliabh-corcra-and-na-toimi.gpx · Recorded 17 October 2026 · point to point

More formats

GeoJSON KML

Confirm the download when your browser asks, then open the file from your browser’s downloads and your mapping app will offer to take it. HiiKER and Garmin Explore both do; the route loads on HiiKER’s free tier, though its EastWest mapping of the Irish uplands is a paid layer. Onto a watch: import the GPX into Garmin Connect, Komoot or Strava and send it to the device from there.