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Middle-Earth Tours
Tour 2: The Places of Middle-Earth
Mount Doom
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| As the light grew he saw to his surprise that what from a distance had seemed wide and featureless flats were in fact all broken and tumbled. Indeed the whole surface of the plains of Gorgoroth was pocked with great holes, as if, while it was still a waste of soft mud, it had been smitten with a shower of bolts and huge slingstones. The largest of these holes were rimmed with ridges of broken rock, and broad fissures ran out from them in all directions. --trotK, "Mount Doom" |
Across Gorgoroth, by Ted Nasmith |
Mount Doom, from the second trailer on the official movie site |
The confused and tumbled shoulders of its great base rose for maybe three thousand feet above the plain, and above them was reared half as high again its tall central cone, like a vast oast or chimney capped with a jagged crater. But already Sam was more than half way up the base, and the plain of Gorgoroth was dim below him, wrapped in fume and shadow. |
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Mount Doom, by Alan Lee |
As he looked up he would have given a shout if his parched throat had allowed him; for amid the rugged humps and shoulders above him he saw plainly a path or road....
The path was not put there for the purposes of Sam. He did not know it, but he was looking at Sauron's Road from Barad-Dûr to the Sammath Naur, the Chambers of Fire. Out from the Dark Tower's huge western gate it came.... [I]t climbed at last, high in the upper cone, but still far from the reeking summit, to a dark entrance that gazed back east straight to the Window of the Eye in Sauron's shadow-mantled fortress. --trotK, "Mount Doom" |
Barad-Dûr, by Roger Garland
(This is actually a view looking back from the Sammath Naur, a.k.a. the Chambers of Fire leading to the Cracks of Doom.) |
| Note Gollum crouching in the lower right corner of Lee's picture. |
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At first he could see nothing. In his great need he drew out once more the phial of Galadriel, but it was pale and cold in his trembling hand and threw no light into the stifling dark. He was come to the heart of the realm of Sauron and the forges of his ancient might, greatest in Middle-earth; all other powers were here subdued. Fearfully he took a few uncertain steps in the dark, and then all at once there came a flash of red that leaped upward, and smote the high black roof. Then Sam saw that he was in a long cave or tunnel that bored into the Mountain's smoking cone. But only a short way ahead its floor and the walls on either side were cloven by a great fissure, out of which the red glare came, now leaping up, now dying down into darkness; and all the while far below there was a rumour and a trouble as of great engines throbbing and labouring.
The light sprang up again, and there on the brink of the chasm, at the very Crack of Doom, stood Frodo, black against the glare, tense, erect, but still as if he had been turned to stone. --trotK, "Mount Doom" |
The Cracks of Doom, by Tim Kirk |
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'Master!' cried Sam, and fell upon his knees. In all that ruin of the world for a moment he felt only joy, great joy. The burden was gone. His master had been saved; and was himself again, he was free. And then Sam caught sight of the maimed and bleeding hand.
'Your poor hand!' he said. 'And I have nothing to bind it with, or comfort it. I would have spared him a whole hand of mine rather. But he's gone now beyond recall, gone for ever.'
'Yes,' said Frodo. 'But do you remember Gandalf's words: Even Gollum may have something yet to do? The Quest would have been in vain, even at the bitter end. So let us forgive him! For the Quest is achieved, and now all is over. I am glad you are here with me. Here at the end of all things, Sam.' --RotK, "Mount Doom" |
image from the official movie site |
The End of the Third Age,
by John Howe |
At the Foot of Mount Doom,
by Ted Nasmith |
image from Cinefex magazine via theonering.net |
The Shadow of Sauron,
by Ted Nasmith |
The realm of Sauron is ended!' said Gandalf. 'The Ring-bearer has fulfilled his Quest.' And as the Captains gazed south to the Land of Mordor, it seemed to them that, black against the pall of cloud, there rose a huge shape of shadow, impenetrable, lightning-crowned, filling all the sky. Enormous it reared above the world, and stretched out towards them a vast threatening hand, terrible but impotent: for even as it leaned over them, a great wind took it, and it was all blown away, and passed; and then a hush fell. --RotK, "The Field of Cormallen" |
Full-size versions of these pictures are on display at Rolozo Tolkien, the official LotR movie site, and theonering.net.
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