There and Back Again: LotR Tour #12

Journey to Middle Earth Hobbiton Bag End NZ

Queenstown: Days 12-14 Part 2

As promised, here is installment #2 of the incredible plethora of Lord of the Rings films sites around Queenstown!

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door.… You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.”
~J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

We had plans for our final days in New Zealand that didn’t turn out, but as a result, we visited even more wonders!

Kawarau River: The Argonath

Our Nomad Safari tour took us to the Argonath, the two statues guarding the river into Gondor. We stood where the shoulder of the righthand king would have been to view the Kawarau River below. Interestingly, the statues’ faces were modeled after Viggo Mortensen’s (Aragorn) grandfathers, a touching gesture he didn’t know about until film’s premiere.

Kawarau River Argonath Film Site — We stand in place of the Argonath above the Kawarau!

The Kawarau is a rafting route that the cast did in fact take their boats down. However, the boats, while very specifically described by Tolkien in the books, were impractical and dangerous on the water. The boats kept tipping and spinning around, which made getting the necessary shots difficult. Gimli’s stunt double even fell out of the boat once in his eagerness to have done with the whole issue!

Originally, there was also supposed to be a fight with orcs along the bank, but the river flooded and destroyed the set, so the scene was scrapped. During the flooding, the nearby Swiss Hotel rented out their squash court for the filming of Cirith Ungol, but since Gollum hadn’t been cast yet, the actors did their lines separately, with Sam filming his nearly a year before Frodo!

We had reserved to take the rafting tour down the Kawarau in order to see the scene from the view of the cast rather than up above, but since we lacked the requisite number of people for the expedition, we rented the last available car in Queenstown to seek out other film sites, such as Lake Alta!

Remarkables Ski Field: Dimrill Dale

The scene where the fellowship emerges from Moria after losing Gandalf was filmed up by Lake Alta in the Remarkables Ski Field. While the cast accessed mountain sites like this one by helicopter, on a previous shoot for Cahadras, Sean Bean (Boromir), who didn’t care much for flying, had the misfortune of sharing a helicopter with Billy Boyd (Pippin) and Dominic Monaghan (Merry), who as a prank asked the pilot to show off his swooping and diving skills. Thus, when the time came to film at Lake Alta, Sean hiked in full costume up to the site.

Lake Alta Dimrill Dale Exit Moria Film Site — The frozen Lake Alta, covered in snow

We certainly respected the difficulty of that hike as we followed his path up the steep and rocky slope covered in snow after two unseasonable storms. Despite the biting wind, the stunning views and beautiful frozen landscape certainly made the hike worthwhile!

Remarkables Ski Field Mountain View — The incredible view from Lake Alta

The Remarkables Mountains housing the lake and ski field featured frequently in the films. The crew actually nicknamed them “The Extendables” since they were used so often, from the Misty Mountains to Ered Nimrais! Photoshopped to be steeper and darker, they became the mountains bordering Mordor. Combined with two other locations, they feature in the background of Minas Tirith. Basically, whenever a shot needed to be filled in, The Remarkables stood in the gap!

The Remarkables Misty Mountains Mordor — The fabulous rugged peaks of The Remarkables

Deerpark Heights: Rohan

Our descent gave us a spectacular view of Deerpark Heights, a huge green mountain by Queenstown used for the scenes of the Rohan refugees fleeing to Helm’s Deep and encountering the Wargs. The filmmakers used forced perspective to make the small pond at the top look like a lake with a huge line of refugees by using shorter people and ponies at the back of the line. Most of the mounted Rohirrim warriors were teenage girls since they had the horsemanship skills and could afford to take the three weeks for filming. When the Wargs attacked, men dressed up in green suits to jump around and spook the horses to give them something to react to. This place was where Aragorn falls from the cliff, but the place where Legolas and Gimli look down after him, where he floats down the river, and where he eventually comes to shore were all different places. But, as another crossover with the X-Men Origins: Wolverine film, this is hill is also where Wolverine’s cabin stood.

Milford Sound

Our tour also included a trip to Milford Sound, one of the major highlights of the area. Technically it is a fjord, carved by a glacier, rather than a sound, which would be formed by a river. The Fjordland area containing it and about a dozen other fjords is a Unesco world heritage site taking up about 10% of New Zealand’s landmass! Milford Sound gets rain 280 days a year, with the rainfall measured in meters (not centimeters), and has hundreds of resulting waterfalls. On the four hour drive from Queenstown to the Sound, the route passes areas used for filming the Dead Marshes, meeting Shadowfax, and the Anduin.