A col is a saddle-like pass between two higher points, and this particular one frames wide views stretching from the north-north-east to the east, making the cairn visible to anyone approaching along the north-eastern route. That visibility may well have been intentional. Cairns of this kind are prehistoric stone mounds, often associated with burial or territorial marking, and their placement on elevated ground or at natural thresholds is a recurring feature of the Irish upland landscape.

The cairn itself is oval in plan, measuring 11.2 metres east to west and 8.6 metres north to south, and rises to between 1.7 and 3 metres in height. It is built largely from fist-sized stones and has a notably even surface, suggesting a degree of deliberate construction rather than casual accumulation. Across the top runs a short east-west ridge of cairn material, roughly 2.1 metres long, which gives the mound a subtle spine-like profile when seen from certain angles. A drystone wall, added at some later point, overlies the western side of the cairn and continues away to the north-west, a reminder that the landscape around it kept being used and reworked long after the cairn was first raised. The karst ground on which it sits, limestone terrain characterised by dissolved rock, thin soils, and a fractured surface, is itself a distinctive element of the Clare uplands, and would have shaped how people moved through and perceived this corridor between the hills.