Purple Mountain, County Kerry
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Purple Mountain () at high, is the 21st–highest peak in
Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...
on the
Arderin Arderin () is a mountain on the border between counties Laois and Offaly in Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is ...
scale, and the 28th–highest according to the Vandeleur-Lynam scale. It is located in
County Kerry County Kerry () is a Counties of Ireland, county on the southwest coast of Republic of Ireland, Ireland, within the Provinces of Ireland, province of Munster and the Southern Region, Ireland, Southern Region. It is bordered by two other countie ...
, and is the highest point of the Purple Mountain Group.


Geology

Purple Mountain is composed of sandstone particles of various sizes which are collectively known as ''
Old Red Sandstone Old Red Sandstone, abbreviated ORS, is an assemblage of rocks in the North Atlantic region largely of Devonian age. It extends in the east across Great Britain, Ireland and Norway, and in the west along the eastern seaboard of North America. It ...
''. Old Red Sandstone has a purple-reddish colour, and has virtually no fossils. The colour gave its name to the mountain group. The composition of ''Old Red Sandstone'' is variable and contains quartz stones, mudstones, siltstones, and sandstone particles (boulders of conglomerate rock containing quartz pebbles are visible).


Geography

The Purple Mountain Group is described as a "heather–strewn"
massif A massif () is a principal mountain mass, such as a compact portion of a mountain range, containing one or more summits (e.g. France's Massif Central). In mountaineering literature, ''massif'' is frequently used to denote the main mass of an ...
with five classified peaks at its centre: Purple Mountain , Purple Mountain NE Top and Shehy Mountain , Tomies Mountain (also called An Chathair) , and Tomies North Top (also called Tomies Rock, or Tomies Chimneys after its gullies that lead to its summit) . The Purple Mountain Group is bounded to the west by the
Gap of Dunloe The Gap of Dunloe (), also recorded as ''Bearna an Choimín'' (meaning "gap of the commonage" or "gap of the little hollow"), is a narrow mountain pass running north–south in County Kerry, Ireland, that separates the MacGillycuddy's Reeks mou ...
, which separates it from
MacGillycuddy's Reeks MacGillycuddy's Reeks () is a sandstone and siltstone mountain range in the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry, Ireland. Stretching , from the Gap of Dunloe in the east, to Glencar, County Kerry, Glencar in the west, the Reeks is Ireland's high ...
range. To the south and east are the
Lakes of Killarney The Lakes of Killarney are a scenic attraction located in Killarney National Park near Killarney, County Kerry, in Ireland. They consist of three lakes: Lough Leane, Muckross Lake (also called Middle Lake) and Upper Lake. Surroundings The ...
and to the north is the wide, flat valley of the
River Laune The River Laune (; Irish: ''An Leamhain'') is a river in County Kerry, Ireland, which flows from Lough Leane (sometimes written as Lough Lein), one of the Lakes of Killarney, through Beaufort, past Ballymalis Castle, through the town of Ki ...
. The eastern half of Purple Mountain is part of
Killarney National Park Killarney National Park (), near the town of Killarney, County Kerry, was the first national park in Ireland, created when the Muckross Estate was donated to the Irish Free State in 1932. The park has since been substantially expanded and en ...
. Within the national park, the lower slopes are covered in
oak An oak is a hardwood tree or shrub in the genus ''Quercus'' of the beech family. They have spirally arranged leaves, often with lobed edges, and a nut called an acorn, borne within a cup. The genus is widely distributed in the Northern Hemisp ...
forests, some of which are remnants of those that covered Ireland before the arrival of humans. Purple Mountain's individual prominence qualifies it as a Marilyn, and its prominence is within 10 metres of the P600 prominence threshold of , which classes Purple Mountain as a "Sub–major" mountain. Purple Mountain meets the
Arderin Arderin () is a mountain on the border between counties Laois and Offaly in Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is ...
,
Simm A SIMM (single in-line memory module) is a type of memory module used in computers from the early 1980s to the early 2000s. It is a printed circuit board upon which multiple random-access memory Integrated circuit chips are attached to one or ...
and Hewitt classifications. It ranks as the 12th–highest mountain in Ireland on the
MountainViews Online Database In these lists of mountains in Ireland, those within Northern Ireland, or on the Republic of Ireland – United Kingdom border, are marked with an asterisk, while the rest are within the Republic of Ireland. Where mountains are ranked by height ...
, '' 100 Highest Irish Mountains'', where the prominence threshold is 100 metres.Mountainviews, (September 2013), "A Guide to Ireland's Mountain Summits: The Vandeleur-Lynams & the Arderins", Collins Books, Cork,


Name

Irish academic Paul Tempan wrote in his 2010 ''Irish Hill and Mountain Names'', that Purple Mountain is "almost certainly a name coined in English". In his ''Topographical Dictionary of Ireland'' (1837), Samuel Lewis wrote that Purple Mountain is "so called from the colour of the shivered slate on its surface". Tempan notes that the "Irish version looks like a back–translation from the English by OSI". Prior to the 19th–century, there are references to the massif being called Tomies, Tomish or Toomish mountain. Tempan notes that in ''The Ancient and Present State of the County of Kerry'' (1756) by Charles Smith, it is clear this name applied to the whole Purple Mountain Group. Other of 19th–century sources confirm this, and it explains why Purple Mountain is not marked on the 6" map, though Tomies and Shehy Mountain are. In ''Irish Names of Places'',
Patrick Weston Joyce Patrick Weston "P. W." Joyce (1827 – 7 January 1914) was an Irish historian, writer and music collector, known particularly for his research in Irish etymology and local place names of Ireland. Biography He was born in Ballyorgan in the B ...
writes that Tomies comes from the Irish ''Tuamaidhe'', meaning two burial
cairn A cairn is a human-made pile (or stack) of stones raised for a purpose, usually as a marker or as a burial mound. The word ''cairn'' comes from the (plural ). Cairns have been and are used for a broad variety of purposes. In prehistory, t ...
s on the summit.Tempan, Paul
Irish Hill and Mountain Names
MountainViews.ie.
As Purple Mountain gained currency in the 19th century, the older name was relegated in status, and now refers to a lower peak of the group, Tomies Mountain .


Hill walking

The classic walk of Purple Mountain is the 14–kilometre 5–6 hour ''Gap of Dunloe Loop'' starting at '' Kate Kearney's Cottage'' and walking up the Gap of Dunloe road (circa 1 hour) past Black Lough to the ''Head of the Gap''; the route then follows the path east into the Purple Mountain massif, and then northeast up to Glas Lough, and then to Purple Mountain itself. From there, the route follows the ridge to Purple Mountain NE Top, Tomies Mountain (or An Chathair), and Tomies North Top (also called Tomies Rock), and then returning to ''Kate Kearney's Cottage'' (care is needed to descend Tommies Chimneys and find the right paths back to Kate Kearney's). A faster alternative to the classic loop–route is the 7–kilometre 3–4 hour route from the ''Head of the Gap'' up to Purple Mountain (and potentially Purple Mountain NE Top), and then retracing the path back down to the ''Head of the Gap''. However, there is limited parking around the ''Head of the Gap'' area (), and the best climbing between Purple Mountain and Tomies North Top is omitted; an alternative is a jaunting–car from ''Kate Kearney's Cottage'' to the ''Head of the Gap'', from which the 9–kilometre 4–5 hour remaining ''Gap of Dunloe Loop'' route is completed. A third route is the 9–kilometre 4–5 hour route that starts from ''Kate Kearney's Cottage'' and directly ascends to Tomies North Top (also called Tomies Rock), via the gullies of Tomies Chimneys, with care needed to find the right paths through the heather to Tomies Chimneys. From there, Tomies Mountain and Purple Mountain are climbed, and the route is retraced to get back to the starting point of ''Kate Kearney's Cottage''.


List of peaks

The following is a download from the ''
MountainViews Online Database In these lists of mountains in Ireland, those within Northern Ireland, or on the Republic of Ireland – United Kingdom border, are marked with an asterisk, while the rest are within the Republic of Ireland. Where mountains are ranked by height ...
'', who list 5 Purple Mountain Group peaks over 100 metres.


Bibliography

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See also

*
Gap of Dunloe The Gap of Dunloe (), also recorded as ''Bearna an Choimín'' (meaning "gap of the commonage" or "gap of the little hollow"), is a narrow mountain pass running north–south in County Kerry, Ireland, that separates the MacGillycuddy's Reeks mou ...
*
Lists of mountains in Ireland In these lists of mountains in Ireland, those within Northern Ireland, or on the Republic of Ireland – United Kingdom border, are marked with an asterisk, while the rest are within the Republic of Ireland. Where mountains are ranked by height ...
*
List of mountains of the British Isles by height This article provides access to lists of mountains in Britain and Ireland by height and by prominence. (See Lists of mountains below.) Height and prominence are the most important metrics for the classifications of mountains by the UIAA; with ...
*
List of Marilyns in the British Isles This is a list of Marilyn hills and mountains in the United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland, Ireland and surrounding islands and Stack (geology), sea stacks. Lists of mountains and hills in the British Isles#Marilyns, Marilyns are defined as peaks w ...
*
List of Hewitt mountains in England, Wales and Ireland This is a list of Hewitt mountains in England, Wales and Ireland by height. Hewitts are defined as "Hills in England, Wales and Ireland over two thousand" feet in height, the general requirement to be called a "mountain" in the British Isl ...


References


External links


MountainViews: The Irish Mountain Website
Purple Mountain (and Purple Mountain Group)

the largest database of British Isles mountains ("
DoBIH The mountains and hills of the British Isles are categorised into various lists based on different combinations of elevation, prominence, and other criteria such as isolation. These lists are used for peak bagging, whereby hillwalkers attempt ...
")
Hill Bagging UK & Ireland
the searchable interface for the
DoBIH The mountains and hills of the British Isles are categorised into various lists based on different combinations of elevation, prominence, and other criteria such as isolation. These lists are used for peak bagging, whereby hillwalkers attempt ...

Ordnance Survey Ireland ("OSI") Online Map ViewerLogainm: Placenames Database of Ireland
{{DEFAULTSORT:Purple Mountain Marilyns of Ireland Hewitts of Ireland Mountains and hills of County Kerry Mountains under 1000 metres