
Torc Waterfall (from Irish: Easach Toirc, meaning “cascade of the wild boar”) is a 20 metres (66 ft) high, 110 metres (360 ft) long cascade waterfall formed by the Owengarriff River as it drains from the Devil’s Punchbowl corrie lake at Mangerton Mountain. The waterfall, which lies at the base of Torc Mountain, in the Killarney National Park, is 4.3 miles (7 kilometres) from Killarney in Kerry, Ireland.
The waterfall is a popular site on the Ring of Kerry and the Kerry Way tours. The word Torc is from the Irish translation of a “wild boar”, and the area is associated with legends involving wild boars. One legend is of a man who was cursed by the Devil to spend each night transformed into a wild boar, but when his secret was revealed by a local farmer, he burst into flames and disappeared into the nearby Devils Punchbowl on Mangerton Mountain from which the Owengarriff River emerged to hide the entrance to his cave beneath the Torc Waterfall.
There is also the story of how the legendary Irish warrior, Fionn MacCumhaill, killed a magical boar on Torc mountain with his golden spear. The 20 meters high waterfall is formed by the Owengarriff River as it drains from the Devil’s Punchbowl lough, a deep cirque high above in Mangerton Mountain.[8] Torc Waterfall sits on a geological fault called the Muckross to Millstreet Fault Line. Torc Mountain consists of 400 million-year-old Devonian Old Red Sandstone, but the base around Muckross Lake is circa 100 million years younger and consists of Carboniferous Limestone.
At some stage, after the limestone was deposited, a period of tectonic-plate collision occurred and the land under Torc was lifted up 3,000 metres, re-exposing the underlying older sandstone. Torc Waterfall is 4.3 miles (7 kilometres) from Killarney, and 1.6 miles (2.5 kilometres) from the gates of Muckross House, in the Killarney National Park.
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