Queenstown Part III - Deer Park Heights
Alright, time for the third and final segment for Queenstown. Then we can get back on the road and continue on to other exciting places. I spent a good four or five days in Queenstown, but I’ll skip to the next relevant part of my stay there since the day after St. Patrick’s Day was pretty much spent hanging out and recovering from all of the excitement. While I was considering what to do with my last full day there, Lindsey, the tough American guy that I mentioned before, volunteered to go hiking somewhere with me. Since one of my top three choices involved doing just that and geeking out along the way, we decided to stick together and kill two birds with one stone.
Before I get into that, though, I need to start off this post with an apology. To the owner guy of Deer Park Heights in the very unlikely chance that you read this someday: I’m sorry. Totally didn’t realize that we were trespassing until we were already up there. To those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, here’s the thing - I’ve had this Lord of the Rings Location Guidebook for several months now. I got it off Leo, the German guy I knew in Taupo, when he went back home, and I’ve been reading through it constantly ever since then. As a consequence, I was pretty psyched to be in Queenstown because a huge chunk of the footage for Rohan was shot up in Deer Park Heights, which is just a bus ride out of the city. I thought, “Hey, while I’m in town for a few days, it would be great to get a ride up there and hike around a bit.” The book was very detailed in terms of how to get to the exact filming locations and assured me that it was possible. When I ran this by Lindsey, he said that he’d met a guy in town who knew the easiest way up there. What I was unaware of at the time, however, was that Deer Park Heights has been completely barred to the public since 2009, and no one’s really allowed up there anymore. I guess the guy got tired of having to keep it maintained and closed the tourist aspect of it down to keep it as a private area. The book was re-printed before this happened, so I had no idea that it was off-limits. And since we followed the directions of Lindsey’s friend, we went around the back entrance and didn’t see the giant No Trespassing sign located on the main road until much later in the day. So there’s my defense and sincerest apology for going someplace we weren’t supposed to be. Please don’t sue us or anything.
Some of you might remember these scenes from The Two Towers
Okay, now that that’s out of the way, I can continue on to the actual hike. I was feeling a bit self-conscious that day because I hadn’t been weighed for months, and the scale at the Nevis had really freaked me out. Once I converted it from kilos into pounds, I felt really fat and out of shape, so I had promised to put myself on a better fitness regime to get my figure back. That was one of the major reasons why I wanted to do a big hike that day, and I definitely got a work out. You’ll notice that the pictures of me taken from this day are not particularly flattering, and that’s why. Lindsey, on the other hand, was in very good shape, and he was a great sport for pausing along the way so that I could catch up. We worked out a nice deal so that he was in charge of getting us out there, and I was responsible for navigating to the film locations once we were on the hill. He managed to work out the timetable for the buses so that we could catch one going out towards Frankton just outside Nomads, switch to Route 6 once in Frankton, and then head out in the direction of Kelvin Heights. The information he'd gotten from his friend indicated that the best way to approach the climb was from the far corner, where the hill was less steep. We were supposed to aim for a suburban district next to a golf course and then hike up from there. I can see why that would be a good idea because the hill is actually pretty huge once you're underneath it. We needed all the help we could get.
The trips to Frankton and Kelvin Heights went off without a hitch. We had about half an hour to wait between buses, so we took the time to reapply sunscreen, use the restrooms, and have a few light snacks. We had each purchased a sandwich from a convenience store in Queenstown, so we decided to save those for later in the day. Since it was the middle of the week, there weren't a whole lot of people riding the bus, so Lindsey and I were the only ones on by the time we passed the first few stops. The driver was very cool and dropped us off as close to the "trail head" as possible. He let us know how often the bus came by and even pointed out the closest stops for us on the way in, so we didn't feel too worried about getting stranded. Curiously, he also didn't mention the fact that we were trespassing when we mentioned our plan. I'm going to assume that he either didn't realize or simply didn't care.
It wasn't immediately apparent where we were supposed to go, so we just circled the base of the hill for a good fifteen minutes or so, walking in the right general direction. No one was around to ask for directions, and the trail was more of a foot path than anything else, so we had to make some educated guesses early on. In retrospect, the sheer amount of fences and lack of signs should have been a clue that we were someplace kind of sketchy. We finally reached a dead end that emptied out into a grassy clearing, but we could see a main road winding up the hill in the distance. We just had no idea how to get to it without circling around for another hour or two. After talking strategy and analyzing the path from different angles, we concluded that the only way up was over the fence. We didn't really want to climb it, but there really didn't seem like any other choice at the time. We figured we'd just hop the first one and then find a way to the main road so that we weren't trespassing, which is just too ironic for words. Anyways, we found a gate with enough footholds to get over and jumped it one at a time. Unfortunately, our plan of just jumping the one fence was dashed as soon as we rounded the trees and saw what had been hidden to us from the other side - a veritable No Man's Land of fences and barbed wire between us and the road. Darn. It was either go across that or go all the way back to town when we'd already devoted hours to the effort, so it was more fence hopping for us. We did eventually figure out how to get to the official track, though, so don't get too worried about our lack of common sense. We were just mildly idiotic instead of completely dense.
Lindsey and I arriving at Deer Park Heights
Moving on from the slightly illegal and hopelessly boring part. The real reason we went up there was to go exploring, and we were pleasantly surprised with just how amazing the view was from up there. Since it was a clear day, you could really see the whole lake and city and all of the little surrounding towns. Plus, they don't call it "Deer Park Heights" for nothing. As soon as we were outside of the suburbs, we were immediately floored by the literally hundreds of deer wandering around the property. They were everywhere and traveled in big, roving packs. They were also incredibly skittish, so whenever we got within their line of view from three hundred meters away, they bolted in unison and took off in a herd like it was The Man From Snowy River or something. It was actually very impressive and beautiful to watch. Unfortunately, I didn't think to get their running on video, but I managed to take several pictures. I'm a bit annoyed because there was a smudge on my lens for the first half of our hike, so every photo has a blurry blob in the upper right corner. I eventually discovered it and wiped it off, but the first batch of pictures might be a bit sub-par for that reason. Oh well.
Wandering around and looking at deer
One thing that was kind of interesting was the weird...scream thing that the red deer did when they were talking to each other. It was something I've never heard a living creature make in my life, something like a bugle horn crossed with a hawk and a chicken. Really bizarre. ...and familiar. My nerd senses were tingling. And, sure enough, after going home and reviewing a very specific scene, I was able to match the sound of the deer to the chase scene in The Fellowship of the Ring, when the four hobbits are running from the Nazgul and jump onto the boat at Buckleberry Ferry. Right after Frodo makes the epic slow-mo jump and they turn to look at the Black Riders on the shore (roughly 55 minutes into the movie), the horse makes this very distinctive noise that perfectly matches what I heard from the deer. Nice. I'm almost completely convinced that they used those deer for that effect. Peter Jackson has acknowledged in past interviews that the main Nazgul scream can be credited to Fran Walsh with a strep throat and some sound mixing, but I would bet money on this. Okay, enough of the crazy fan girl for the moment.
There was one slightly uncomfortable moment somewhere between the third and fourth fence. Lindsey had just hopped over and landed on the other side, and I had thrown my bag over the top in preparation to climb as well, when I happened to catch something out of the corner of my eye. I turned my head, and there was this thing standing on the top of a hill just a dozen yards away from me. I think it must've been a stag...or even a moose. Whatever it was, it was big and I didn't want to be on the same side of the fence as it. Since it seemed perfectly happy just standing there and looking at me, I took my time to edge slowly over to the fence and climb over without startling it. After that, we decided to be extra cautious of the wildlife and make sure that none of those things were within range. We saw some bison and llamas out in the distance as well, but we made sure to give them a wide berth. It was easy to pick out the big ones because their battle cry was more like a deep MOO! sound. Like a cow with something caught in its throat. So whenever we heard that, we made sure to keep away.
Keeping our distance
The whole lower part of the hill was made up of trees and grassland with little creeks interspersed between them. As we got higher up and finally found the main road, the groves of trees gradually began to disappear and give way to rocky bluffs and higher grasses. Just before getting out of the trees, however, we were walking along the road when Lindsey heard a noise in the brush. He climbed the hill in front of us to go investigate and stopped dead in his tracks. I, of course, had no idea what he was looking at, so I kind of freaked out when he just slowly backed away and muttered, "That is a big animal." I was imagining a gigantic, bloodthirsty beast barreling towards us at any second, so I was more than a little jittery when something suddenly crashed out of the trees and sidled up to us like a dog. It was a donkey. Lindsey is very over-dramatic. The poor thing was probably just really lonely because no one goes up there to play with him anymore. He was very receptive to pets and followed at our heels all the way down the road. We were both very concerned about a wound on his flank, however, and made sure he was able to move around alright before moving on. Obviously, we can't exactly call anyone and report it now because it would be a little difficult to explain how we happened to run across the donkey on private property anyway, but I hope the little guy's alright up there. Hopefully someone comes from town every once in a while to check on the animals and make sure they're doing okay. He seemed fine to us, at least, but I'd feel better knowing that he gets check-ups every once in a while.
Our donkey friend
After parting with our donkey sidekick, we started getting into the really hilly part of the day. It had been mostly flat and scenic up until then, so it was time to get a little exercise and start climbing. In other words, it was time for me to just hang my head in shame and admit to my lack of fitness while Lindsey had to stand around waiting for me. At some points, the terrain was close to vertical, so it was very slow going, but the views made it worth the effort. Most of the animals were below us by then, but since we didn't want any surprises, we stuck to the fence line so that we had something of a wall on one side. The higher we got, the more of the surrounding lake district we could see, so that was just icing on the cake. We still had no idea how far from the film location we were, so we just kept walking in the hopes that we'd eventually stumble onto it. Our first real marker came in the form of an old barn and stable. There was evidence of coin donation machines for tourists and a holding area that was still in relatively good shape, so I would guess that it was where a petting zoo was when the park was still in operation. Nothing was there when we arrived, but there were padlocks on all of doors and signs of animals having been around recently. We took that as a sign that we were on the right track and continued past it.
Getting out of the trees
The deserted stables
We hadn't gone very far before my nerd sense started tingling. We had reached a certain area where the combination of grass and rocks was beginning to look familiar, so I stopped Lindsey long enough to look through the guidebook. The section for Deer Park Heights was especially descriptive, so there was a map and everything. At first, we hadn't been sure which direction we were arriving from, but once we had an idea of where the Remarkables (big, awe-inspiring mountains) were in relation to us, it was easy to use the book to find the locations. One piece of rock in particular caught my eye, and after some quick consultation, I deduced that we had found our first film set of the day. A brief hike and pictures from various angles confirmed it - we had arrived at the spot where a Warg scout killed Hama (Rohan soldier guy) before the rest of the Wargs attacked the refugees. In the movie, you see the actors looking around to find out what's spooked the horses while the camera pans up behind their heads. Then you see a CGI Warg rider jump down from the cliff and land on top of them, effectively launching a surprise attack. We lined up the same angles as closely as possible from memory and paused there for a bit. Once we had one location confirmed, it was easy to find the other ones since they were all labeled in relation to each other on the map. We concluded that we just needed to take the road off to the right in order to pass the entrance to the Paths of the Dead and more Rohan refugee territory.
The little cliff, our first actual discovery of the day
What it looked like in the movie
Left for the view, right for the Paths of the Dead
Now, the guidebook gave us a general idea of where the Paths of the Dead entrance should have been, but there was no way to tell for sure which cliff it was without having the picture right in front of us. It gave us the GPS coordinates for it, but neither of that had that on us. What I ended up doing is taking twenty or thirty pictures of random rocks in the hopes of comparing them to movie stills back in Queenstown. One of them ended up being right on the money. I honestly have no idea how they got the actors up to this cliff or why they had to choose that one in particular, but I finally found the one picture that matches the scene where Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli exit out of the Paths of the Dead. In the movie, you see them fleeing from a crumbling city of ghost warriors and nearly getting buried by a mountain of skulls before tumbling out into the sunshine, only to see the Corsair pirate ships razing townships down below. These pictures might jog your memories.
Our heroes coming out of a fake rock and looking down at the Kawarau River...or Osgiliath
The real area around Deer Park Heights
After that, it was smooth sailing towards the "small mountain tarn" used for filming a lot of the refugee scenes. We had no idea what a tarn is, but apparently it's a small lake formed in a cirque by an excavated glacier. Thank you, Google search. It was also used for the scene where Gimli is joking around with Eowyn about dwarf women and then falls off his horse, much to the amusement of Aragorn in the background. I'm also fairly certain that the same area was used for the scene when Eowyn brings Aragorn some truly disgusting stew and finds out that he's old enough to be her grandfather. Kind of a deal breaker for that relationship, but then again, Aragorn went and married Arwen in the end, and she's over 2,700 years older than him, so...yeah. Guess it depends on how you look at that. We stayed next to the water for a while and took pictures from pretty much every angle and then sat around admiring the view of Arrowtown and Frankton. Then it was time to move on to the last couple spots for the day.
The first tarn, the site of where Gimli was thrown from his horse
Scene from the movie
Fortunately for us, the rest of the film locations were all bunched up on top of each other, so that made our job much easier. One spot in particular was used for two scenes in the same area - the part where Legolas is watching the warg riders ride over the hill and the part where Aragorn falls off a cliff into the river below. There's still some debate about this because we're 100% sure about the Legolas bit, but we were less certain about the cliff used for Aragorn's fall. It really looks like the same rock shot from different angles and with different perspective, but it's kind of difficult to tell for sure. I'll get to that in a minute. First I'll describe the Legolas shot. In The Two Towers, right after Hamas is killed by a warg and King Theoden rounds all the men up to go fight them, the camera cuts away to Legolas standing on a rise, looking out into the distance. As the audience watches, dozens of warg riders arrive over the hill and start riding towards the refugees. Legolas picks off several with his bow and arrows before the rest of the group arrives with his horse. I managed to pose for the same shot, but it's much more flattering with Orlando Bloom. It's definitely the same hill, but I think Peter Jackson shot the scene from a slightly lower perspective because you can't see the road or the town in the finished product. Close enough.
My interpretation and the actual film sequence, now with photoshopped mountains
The next shot was, as I mentioned before, a little harder to pinpoint. In the movie, Aragorn is dragged over the side of a cliff by a warg and is presumed dead after the fight. They make is look like a really steep bluff that leads straight into the water in the movie, but there was nothing like that around the picnic area we found ourselves in. According to the guidebook, there was supposed to be a very recognizable cliff used for that sequence right in the same spot, but nothing else even came close. We concluded that it must've been the same one Legolas stood on originally, just filmed from a different angle. Since the bit where he's actually dragged over the edge is CGI anyway, it's also possible that they just zoomed in close on the rock and then made a little miniature Aragorn fall off the side. I'm not entirely sure, but we hunted all over before deciding that we were probably right. There's a brief part in the movie when it shows the area around the cliff more clearly as Legolas is hunting for clues, but since that was shot over ten years ago, it's very possible that more grass could have grown up around the rock to make it look smaller. I dunno.
Our closest approximation of "the cliff"
The "cliff" from the movie. Kind of hard to tell.
The last scene shot in this same area was the second mountain tarn used for the other refugee scenes. Back when they were doing filming, the Remarkables behind the lake were covered with snow because it was most likely fall or winter, but everything else matches up pretty well. Since those refugees were doing a lot of marching in between Saruman's plotting, Merry and Pippin's chatting with Treebeard, and other random scenes with Frodo and Sam, they had to find a nice place for them to walk around a lot. I'm still not sure how they got so many people and horses up there since the area is pretty small, but I guess that's the magic of film-making - makes the whole place look much larger. Since that was the last official film location mentioned in the book, Lindsey and I were almost ready to head back down. We just had one more stop left.
The second mountain tarn used for the refugee scenes. See the fourth photo for clarification.
Unsurprisingly, the Lord of the Rings wasn't the only movie shot up in Deer Park Heights. The place is the perfect spot with wide, sweeping views that could resemble anywhere, plenty of uninhabited space for spreading out, and an accessible road that connects to a major town nearby. It seems like a couple of other directors had the same idea as Peter Jackson and decided to film up there as well. Most recently, the area was used for "Logan's Cabin" in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. If you guys have seen that one, it's the part where he's hanging out with that school teacher chick in the "Canadian Rockies" and lying low to get away from all of the government agents.
A little less recently - specifically from 1986 to 1988 - the site was used for Disney's The Rescue, a movie about a bunch of kids who are trying to rescue their dads, who are prisoners of war. The parents were captured by the North Koreans and are locked up in prison while their kids plan an escape. I haven't seen the movie myself, but the prison is till standing not too far from the second mountain tarn. This is very atypical of New Zealanders since they're huge eco-geeks obsessed with leaving everything how they found it. After all, Edoras was completely dismantled after filming and can't be seen at all anymore. I wasn't really complaining, though, because it was cool to see the set still standing, probably even more authentic-looking after decades out in the elements.
The front of the Korean prison
Lindsey and I walked out to the set and had our lunches just outside the barbed wire fence. It was just about mid-afternoon at that point, so we were starving. I wanted to patrol around the perimeter a bit and take pictures, but Lindsey was feeling somewhat under the weather. Apparently, he's contracted a nasty stomach flu several days before, and I guess it wasn't completely gone. It had started to act up on him towards the end, so he sat tight and tried to get his energy back while I explored around the set. After hopping so many fences that day, I figured it wouldn't hurt to climb one more. I circled around behind the prison and saw that the back was in much worse shape than the front. It had obviously seen better days and had been vandalized in a few places. Overall, it looked kind of haunted. I got as far as the back deck before chickening out. Lindsey was on the other side of the barbed wire, so I didn't feel like venturing inside. I was able to take a few peeks, however, and notice a Lindaeur Brut champagne bottle and the remnants of a trespassing party. I didn't linger very long because the place was creeping me out, but it gave Lindsey time to get some color back in his cheeks and chug some water.
View from the back. All run-down.
After the prison, it was pretty much all downhill. Literally. We had seen everything we'd wanted to see, and we wanted to get back into town before the buses stopped coming regularly, so we retraced our steps and started making our way back down the mountain. It went much easier on the way down because we knew where we were going, and it was easier on our legs. We probably managed to make it all the way down in less than 45 minutes, altogether.
One last scenic look out on the way down
There was one last funny moment, however. Since we hadn't run into anyone the entire day and had noticed various clues along the way, we had come to the conclusion that the park was closed for at least the day. Of course, we found out later that it had been closed for a while, but we had a feeling that we were someplace we weren't supposed to be by the end of the day. Just as we were reaching the exit, we got confirmation of this hypothesis. Normally, people would access the park by car and then park up by the picnic area for guided tours and the like. Since we were on foot, we were completely open to the elements. So when we happened upon a sign that read, "Danger! Stay in car at all times!" we were a little wary. Especially since the sign was directly in front of a gauntlet of ferocious llamas. Yeah. Normally, I wouldn't be all that worried because...they're llamas, but I've read that they can be quite mean and will spit if intimidated, so I didn't want to startle them. You guys ever see Hitchcock's The Birds? You know the part at the end when they have to slowly creep past all of the birds to get to the car? Yeah, it was kind of like that. There were about five llamas guarding the fence on each side, and we had to sneak right through the middle of them with only about two feet between us. They totally didn't care, though. They just looked at us like we were idiots. One little baby llama took a particular fancy to Lindsey and went right up to him for pets. I was worried about that at first because you always hear about mothers getting all protective and territorial if you touch their young, but they all seemed perfectly fine with us.
Lindsey's llama friend
The rest of the hike back was fairly uneventful. Our donkey friend came out to greet us again on the way back, and we were happy to see that he'd found another donkey buddy to play with in our absence. He was a very good boy and walked us all the way to the main gate...where we saw the No Trespassing signs for the first time. Oops. Oh well, it can't be undone now. We estimated that we were right on schedule for a bus to come pick us up, so we literally ran down to the nearest bus stop and got there just in time for one to come by. Lindsey had to go to New World for groceries, so the bus driver lady dropped us off halfway back to Frankton, informing us that the supermarket was just around the corner. It wasn't. After wandering around the suburban neighborhood a bit, we finally flagged a car down to ask for directions, and they were so nice that they told us to just hop in. They drove us right to New World, which was quite a ways out there, and then we were able to catch the bus from there right back into Frankton and Queenstown. Just in time for dinner and relaxation. All in all, not a bad way to spend my last official day in Queenstown. We were leaving on Stray early in the morning, so I spent the rest of the evening packing and resting.
That's all for now, folks! Tune in next time for...the stop after Queenstown. See ya!
Before I get into that, though, I need to start off this post with an apology. To the owner guy of Deer Park Heights in the very unlikely chance that you read this someday: I’m sorry. Totally didn’t realize that we were trespassing until we were already up there. To those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, here’s the thing - I’ve had this Lord of the Rings Location Guidebook for several months now. I got it off Leo, the German guy I knew in Taupo, when he went back home, and I’ve been reading through it constantly ever since then. As a consequence, I was pretty psyched to be in Queenstown because a huge chunk of the footage for Rohan was shot up in Deer Park Heights, which is just a bus ride out of the city. I thought, “Hey, while I’m in town for a few days, it would be great to get a ride up there and hike around a bit.” The book was very detailed in terms of how to get to the exact filming locations and assured me that it was possible. When I ran this by Lindsey, he said that he’d met a guy in town who knew the easiest way up there. What I was unaware of at the time, however, was that Deer Park Heights has been completely barred to the public since 2009, and no one’s really allowed up there anymore. I guess the guy got tired of having to keep it maintained and closed the tourist aspect of it down to keep it as a private area. The book was re-printed before this happened, so I had no idea that it was off-limits. And since we followed the directions of Lindsey’s friend, we went around the back entrance and didn’t see the giant No Trespassing sign located on the main road until much later in the day. So there’s my defense and sincerest apology for going someplace we weren’t supposed to be. Please don’t sue us or anything.
Some of you might remember these scenes from The Two Towers
Okay, now that that’s out of the way, I can continue on to the actual hike. I was feeling a bit self-conscious that day because I hadn’t been weighed for months, and the scale at the Nevis had really freaked me out. Once I converted it from kilos into pounds, I felt really fat and out of shape, so I had promised to put myself on a better fitness regime to get my figure back. That was one of the major reasons why I wanted to do a big hike that day, and I definitely got a work out. You’ll notice that the pictures of me taken from this day are not particularly flattering, and that’s why. Lindsey, on the other hand, was in very good shape, and he was a great sport for pausing along the way so that I could catch up. We worked out a nice deal so that he was in charge of getting us out there, and I was responsible for navigating to the film locations once we were on the hill. He managed to work out the timetable for the buses so that we could catch one going out towards Frankton just outside Nomads, switch to Route 6 once in Frankton, and then head out in the direction of Kelvin Heights. The information he'd gotten from his friend indicated that the best way to approach the climb was from the far corner, where the hill was less steep. We were supposed to aim for a suburban district next to a golf course and then hike up from there. I can see why that would be a good idea because the hill is actually pretty huge once you're underneath it. We needed all the help we could get.
The trips to Frankton and Kelvin Heights went off without a hitch. We had about half an hour to wait between buses, so we took the time to reapply sunscreen, use the restrooms, and have a few light snacks. We had each purchased a sandwich from a convenience store in Queenstown, so we decided to save those for later in the day. Since it was the middle of the week, there weren't a whole lot of people riding the bus, so Lindsey and I were the only ones on by the time we passed the first few stops. The driver was very cool and dropped us off as close to the "trail head" as possible. He let us know how often the bus came by and even pointed out the closest stops for us on the way in, so we didn't feel too worried about getting stranded. Curiously, he also didn't mention the fact that we were trespassing when we mentioned our plan. I'm going to assume that he either didn't realize or simply didn't care.
It wasn't immediately apparent where we were supposed to go, so we just circled the base of the hill for a good fifteen minutes or so, walking in the right general direction. No one was around to ask for directions, and the trail was more of a foot path than anything else, so we had to make some educated guesses early on. In retrospect, the sheer amount of fences and lack of signs should have been a clue that we were someplace kind of sketchy. We finally reached a dead end that emptied out into a grassy clearing, but we could see a main road winding up the hill in the distance. We just had no idea how to get to it without circling around for another hour or two. After talking strategy and analyzing the path from different angles, we concluded that the only way up was over the fence. We didn't really want to climb it, but there really didn't seem like any other choice at the time. We figured we'd just hop the first one and then find a way to the main road so that we weren't trespassing, which is just too ironic for words. Anyways, we found a gate with enough footholds to get over and jumped it one at a time. Unfortunately, our plan of just jumping the one fence was dashed as soon as we rounded the trees and saw what had been hidden to us from the other side - a veritable No Man's Land of fences and barbed wire between us and the road. Darn. It was either go across that or go all the way back to town when we'd already devoted hours to the effort, so it was more fence hopping for us. We did eventually figure out how to get to the official track, though, so don't get too worried about our lack of common sense. We were just mildly idiotic instead of completely dense.
Lindsey and I arriving at Deer Park Heights
Moving on from the slightly illegal and hopelessly boring part. The real reason we went up there was to go exploring, and we were pleasantly surprised with just how amazing the view was from up there. Since it was a clear day, you could really see the whole lake and city and all of the little surrounding towns. Plus, they don't call it "Deer Park Heights" for nothing. As soon as we were outside of the suburbs, we were immediately floored by the literally hundreds of deer wandering around the property. They were everywhere and traveled in big, roving packs. They were also incredibly skittish, so whenever we got within their line of view from three hundred meters away, they bolted in unison and took off in a herd like it was The Man From Snowy River or something. It was actually very impressive and beautiful to watch. Unfortunately, I didn't think to get their running on video, but I managed to take several pictures. I'm a bit annoyed because there was a smudge on my lens for the first half of our hike, so every photo has a blurry blob in the upper right corner. I eventually discovered it and wiped it off, but the first batch of pictures might be a bit sub-par for that reason. Oh well.
Wandering around and looking at deer
One thing that was kind of interesting was the weird...scream thing that the red deer did when they were talking to each other. It was something I've never heard a living creature make in my life, something like a bugle horn crossed with a hawk and a chicken. Really bizarre. ...and familiar. My nerd senses were tingling. And, sure enough, after going home and reviewing a very specific scene, I was able to match the sound of the deer to the chase scene in The Fellowship of the Ring, when the four hobbits are running from the Nazgul and jump onto the boat at Buckleberry Ferry. Right after Frodo makes the epic slow-mo jump and they turn to look at the Black Riders on the shore (roughly 55 minutes into the movie), the horse makes this very distinctive noise that perfectly matches what I heard from the deer. Nice. I'm almost completely convinced that they used those deer for that effect. Peter Jackson has acknowledged in past interviews that the main Nazgul scream can be credited to Fran Walsh with a strep throat and some sound mixing, but I would bet money on this. Okay, enough of the crazy fan girl for the moment.
There was one slightly uncomfortable moment somewhere between the third and fourth fence. Lindsey had just hopped over and landed on the other side, and I had thrown my bag over the top in preparation to climb as well, when I happened to catch something out of the corner of my eye. I turned my head, and there was this thing standing on the top of a hill just a dozen yards away from me. I think it must've been a stag...or even a moose. Whatever it was, it was big and I didn't want to be on the same side of the fence as it. Since it seemed perfectly happy just standing there and looking at me, I took my time to edge slowly over to the fence and climb over without startling it. After that, we decided to be extra cautious of the wildlife and make sure that none of those things were within range. We saw some bison and llamas out in the distance as well, but we made sure to give them a wide berth. It was easy to pick out the big ones because their battle cry was more like a deep MOO! sound. Like a cow with something caught in its throat. So whenever we heard that, we made sure to keep away.
Keeping our distance
The whole lower part of the hill was made up of trees and grassland with little creeks interspersed between them. As we got higher up and finally found the main road, the groves of trees gradually began to disappear and give way to rocky bluffs and higher grasses. Just before getting out of the trees, however, we were walking along the road when Lindsey heard a noise in the brush. He climbed the hill in front of us to go investigate and stopped dead in his tracks. I, of course, had no idea what he was looking at, so I kind of freaked out when he just slowly backed away and muttered, "That is a big animal." I was imagining a gigantic, bloodthirsty beast barreling towards us at any second, so I was more than a little jittery when something suddenly crashed out of the trees and sidled up to us like a dog. It was a donkey. Lindsey is very over-dramatic. The poor thing was probably just really lonely because no one goes up there to play with him anymore. He was very receptive to pets and followed at our heels all the way down the road. We were both very concerned about a wound on his flank, however, and made sure he was able to move around alright before moving on. Obviously, we can't exactly call anyone and report it now because it would be a little difficult to explain how we happened to run across the donkey on private property anyway, but I hope the little guy's alright up there. Hopefully someone comes from town every once in a while to check on the animals and make sure they're doing okay. He seemed fine to us, at least, but I'd feel better knowing that he gets check-ups every once in a while.
Our donkey friend
After parting with our donkey sidekick, we started getting into the really hilly part of the day. It had been mostly flat and scenic up until then, so it was time to get a little exercise and start climbing. In other words, it was time for me to just hang my head in shame and admit to my lack of fitness while Lindsey had to stand around waiting for me. At some points, the terrain was close to vertical, so it was very slow going, but the views made it worth the effort. Most of the animals were below us by then, but since we didn't want any surprises, we stuck to the fence line so that we had something of a wall on one side. The higher we got, the more of the surrounding lake district we could see, so that was just icing on the cake. We still had no idea how far from the film location we were, so we just kept walking in the hopes that we'd eventually stumble onto it. Our first real marker came in the form of an old barn and stable. There was evidence of coin donation machines for tourists and a holding area that was still in relatively good shape, so I would guess that it was where a petting zoo was when the park was still in operation. Nothing was there when we arrived, but there were padlocks on all of doors and signs of animals having been around recently. We took that as a sign that we were on the right track and continued past it.
Getting out of the trees
The deserted stables
We hadn't gone very far before my nerd sense started tingling. We had reached a certain area where the combination of grass and rocks was beginning to look familiar, so I stopped Lindsey long enough to look through the guidebook. The section for Deer Park Heights was especially descriptive, so there was a map and everything. At first, we hadn't been sure which direction we were arriving from, but once we had an idea of where the Remarkables (big, awe-inspiring mountains) were in relation to us, it was easy to use the book to find the locations. One piece of rock in particular caught my eye, and after some quick consultation, I deduced that we had found our first film set of the day. A brief hike and pictures from various angles confirmed it - we had arrived at the spot where a Warg scout killed Hama (Rohan soldier guy) before the rest of the Wargs attacked the refugees. In the movie, you see the actors looking around to find out what's spooked the horses while the camera pans up behind their heads. Then you see a CGI Warg rider jump down from the cliff and land on top of them, effectively launching a surprise attack. We lined up the same angles as closely as possible from memory and paused there for a bit. Once we had one location confirmed, it was easy to find the other ones since they were all labeled in relation to each other on the map. We concluded that we just needed to take the road off to the right in order to pass the entrance to the Paths of the Dead and more Rohan refugee territory.
The little cliff, our first actual discovery of the day
What it looked like in the movie
Left for the view, right for the Paths of the Dead
Now, the guidebook gave us a general idea of where the Paths of the Dead entrance should have been, but there was no way to tell for sure which cliff it was without having the picture right in front of us. It gave us the GPS coordinates for it, but neither of that had that on us. What I ended up doing is taking twenty or thirty pictures of random rocks in the hopes of comparing them to movie stills back in Queenstown. One of them ended up being right on the money. I honestly have no idea how they got the actors up to this cliff or why they had to choose that one in particular, but I finally found the one picture that matches the scene where Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli exit out of the Paths of the Dead. In the movie, you see them fleeing from a crumbling city of ghost warriors and nearly getting buried by a mountain of skulls before tumbling out into the sunshine, only to see the Corsair pirate ships razing townships down below. These pictures might jog your memories.
Our heroes coming out of a fake rock and looking down at the Kawarau River...or Osgiliath
The real area around Deer Park Heights
After that, it was smooth sailing towards the "small mountain tarn" used for filming a lot of the refugee scenes. We had no idea what a tarn is, but apparently it's a small lake formed in a cirque by an excavated glacier. Thank you, Google search. It was also used for the scene where Gimli is joking around with Eowyn about dwarf women and then falls off his horse, much to the amusement of Aragorn in the background. I'm also fairly certain that the same area was used for the scene when Eowyn brings Aragorn some truly disgusting stew and finds out that he's old enough to be her grandfather. Kind of a deal breaker for that relationship, but then again, Aragorn went and married Arwen in the end, and she's over 2,700 years older than him, so...yeah. Guess it depends on how you look at that. We stayed next to the water for a while and took pictures from pretty much every angle and then sat around admiring the view of Arrowtown and Frankton. Then it was time to move on to the last couple spots for the day.
The first tarn, the site of where Gimli was thrown from his horse
Scene from the movie
Fortunately for us, the rest of the film locations were all bunched up on top of each other, so that made our job much easier. One spot in particular was used for two scenes in the same area - the part where Legolas is watching the warg riders ride over the hill and the part where Aragorn falls off a cliff into the river below. There's still some debate about this because we're 100% sure about the Legolas bit, but we were less certain about the cliff used for Aragorn's fall. It really looks like the same rock shot from different angles and with different perspective, but it's kind of difficult to tell for sure. I'll get to that in a minute. First I'll describe the Legolas shot. In The Two Towers, right after Hamas is killed by a warg and King Theoden rounds all the men up to go fight them, the camera cuts away to Legolas standing on a rise, looking out into the distance. As the audience watches, dozens of warg riders arrive over the hill and start riding towards the refugees. Legolas picks off several with his bow and arrows before the rest of the group arrives with his horse. I managed to pose for the same shot, but it's much more flattering with Orlando Bloom. It's definitely the same hill, but I think Peter Jackson shot the scene from a slightly lower perspective because you can't see the road or the town in the finished product. Close enough.
My interpretation and the actual film sequence, now with photoshopped mountains
The next shot was, as I mentioned before, a little harder to pinpoint. In the movie, Aragorn is dragged over the side of a cliff by a warg and is presumed dead after the fight. They make is look like a really steep bluff that leads straight into the water in the movie, but there was nothing like that around the picnic area we found ourselves in. According to the guidebook, there was supposed to be a very recognizable cliff used for that sequence right in the same spot, but nothing else even came close. We concluded that it must've been the same one Legolas stood on originally, just filmed from a different angle. Since the bit where he's actually dragged over the edge is CGI anyway, it's also possible that they just zoomed in close on the rock and then made a little miniature Aragorn fall off the side. I'm not entirely sure, but we hunted all over before deciding that we were probably right. There's a brief part in the movie when it shows the area around the cliff more clearly as Legolas is hunting for clues, but since that was shot over ten years ago, it's very possible that more grass could have grown up around the rock to make it look smaller. I dunno.
Our closest approximation of "the cliff"
The "cliff" from the movie. Kind of hard to tell.
The last scene shot in this same area was the second mountain tarn used for the other refugee scenes. Back when they were doing filming, the Remarkables behind the lake were covered with snow because it was most likely fall or winter, but everything else matches up pretty well. Since those refugees were doing a lot of marching in between Saruman's plotting, Merry and Pippin's chatting with Treebeard, and other random scenes with Frodo and Sam, they had to find a nice place for them to walk around a lot. I'm still not sure how they got so many people and horses up there since the area is pretty small, but I guess that's the magic of film-making - makes the whole place look much larger. Since that was the last official film location mentioned in the book, Lindsey and I were almost ready to head back down. We just had one more stop left.
The second mountain tarn used for the refugee scenes. See the fourth photo for clarification.
Unsurprisingly, the Lord of the Rings wasn't the only movie shot up in Deer Park Heights. The place is the perfect spot with wide, sweeping views that could resemble anywhere, plenty of uninhabited space for spreading out, and an accessible road that connects to a major town nearby. It seems like a couple of other directors had the same idea as Peter Jackson and decided to film up there as well. Most recently, the area was used for "Logan's Cabin" in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. If you guys have seen that one, it's the part where he's hanging out with that school teacher chick in the "Canadian Rockies" and lying low to get away from all of the government agents.
A little less recently - specifically from 1986 to 1988 - the site was used for Disney's The Rescue, a movie about a bunch of kids who are trying to rescue their dads, who are prisoners of war. The parents were captured by the North Koreans and are locked up in prison while their kids plan an escape. I haven't seen the movie myself, but the prison is till standing not too far from the second mountain tarn. This is very atypical of New Zealanders since they're huge eco-geeks obsessed with leaving everything how they found it. After all, Edoras was completely dismantled after filming and can't be seen at all anymore. I wasn't really complaining, though, because it was cool to see the set still standing, probably even more authentic-looking after decades out in the elements.
The front of the Korean prison
Lindsey and I walked out to the set and had our lunches just outside the barbed wire fence. It was just about mid-afternoon at that point, so we were starving. I wanted to patrol around the perimeter a bit and take pictures, but Lindsey was feeling somewhat under the weather. Apparently, he's contracted a nasty stomach flu several days before, and I guess it wasn't completely gone. It had started to act up on him towards the end, so he sat tight and tried to get his energy back while I explored around the set. After hopping so many fences that day, I figured it wouldn't hurt to climb one more. I circled around behind the prison and saw that the back was in much worse shape than the front. It had obviously seen better days and had been vandalized in a few places. Overall, it looked kind of haunted. I got as far as the back deck before chickening out. Lindsey was on the other side of the barbed wire, so I didn't feel like venturing inside. I was able to take a few peeks, however, and notice a Lindaeur Brut champagne bottle and the remnants of a trespassing party. I didn't linger very long because the place was creeping me out, but it gave Lindsey time to get some color back in his cheeks and chug some water.
View from the back. All run-down.
After the prison, it was pretty much all downhill. Literally. We had seen everything we'd wanted to see, and we wanted to get back into town before the buses stopped coming regularly, so we retraced our steps and started making our way back down the mountain. It went much easier on the way down because we knew where we were going, and it was easier on our legs. We probably managed to make it all the way down in less than 45 minutes, altogether.
One last scenic look out on the way down
There was one last funny moment, however. Since we hadn't run into anyone the entire day and had noticed various clues along the way, we had come to the conclusion that the park was closed for at least the day. Of course, we found out later that it had been closed for a while, but we had a feeling that we were someplace we weren't supposed to be by the end of the day. Just as we were reaching the exit, we got confirmation of this hypothesis. Normally, people would access the park by car and then park up by the picnic area for guided tours and the like. Since we were on foot, we were completely open to the elements. So when we happened upon a sign that read, "Danger! Stay in car at all times!" we were a little wary. Especially since the sign was directly in front of a gauntlet of ferocious llamas. Yeah. Normally, I wouldn't be all that worried because...they're llamas, but I've read that they can be quite mean and will spit if intimidated, so I didn't want to startle them. You guys ever see Hitchcock's The Birds? You know the part at the end when they have to slowly creep past all of the birds to get to the car? Yeah, it was kind of like that. There were about five llamas guarding the fence on each side, and we had to sneak right through the middle of them with only about two feet between us. They totally didn't care, though. They just looked at us like we were idiots. One little baby llama took a particular fancy to Lindsey and went right up to him for pets. I was worried about that at first because you always hear about mothers getting all protective and territorial if you touch their young, but they all seemed perfectly fine with us.
Lindsey's llama friend
The rest of the hike back was fairly uneventful. Our donkey friend came out to greet us again on the way back, and we were happy to see that he'd found another donkey buddy to play with in our absence. He was a very good boy and walked us all the way to the main gate...where we saw the No Trespassing signs for the first time. Oops. Oh well, it can't be undone now. We estimated that we were right on schedule for a bus to come pick us up, so we literally ran down to the nearest bus stop and got there just in time for one to come by. Lindsey had to go to New World for groceries, so the bus driver lady dropped us off halfway back to Frankton, informing us that the supermarket was just around the corner. It wasn't. After wandering around the suburban neighborhood a bit, we finally flagged a car down to ask for directions, and they were so nice that they told us to just hop in. They drove us right to New World, which was quite a ways out there, and then we were able to catch the bus from there right back into Frankton and Queenstown. Just in time for dinner and relaxation. All in all, not a bad way to spend my last official day in Queenstown. We were leaving on Stray early in the morning, so I spent the rest of the evening packing and resting.
That's all for now, folks! Tune in next time for...the stop after Queenstown. See ya!