It measures fourteen metres in diameter and rises to about a metre in height, and its outer edge is defined by a kerb of granite boulders, the kind of deliberate boundary that separates a constructed monument from simple rock scatter.

Cairns of this type are generally associated with prehistoric funerary or ceremonial activity, often dating to the Bronze Age, when upland summits were favoured locations for monuments that commanded wide views across the surrounding terrain. The choice of a mountain top was rarely accidental; these sites were built to be seen, or perhaps to mark a point where the living made some formal acknowledgement of the dead. The granite kerbing here serves a structural function, holding the loose stone of the cairn in place, but it also gives the monument a defined shape and edge that would have been legible to anyone approaching across the open ground.