Discover New Zealand, Home of Middle Earth
Sunday, Day 7. We were fortunate to find a Catholic church just southwest of the helicopter landing site, so we went to church Saturday Night and were ready to take the helicopter trip Sunday morning. The weather was chancy, but Bill Reid, our pilot, said there was better than a 50/50 chance we could get to the places we wanted to go, so we decided to give it a go. I thought Stefanie would be nervous, but once we got off the ground she enjoyed flying in a wobbly wing airplane.
Our helicopter was a McDonnell Douglas 500E, a civilian version of the Hughes OH6 I dealt with in the Army. The generals didn't like the OH6 because it was "funny looking," preferring instead the Bell JetRanger OH58 that looked "swoopy" but didn't perform nearly as well in the high density altitude of the Vietnamese highlands. This machine performed very well indeed with only three of its five seats filled. I noted that it had a pointy nose which apparently does nothing except make it look "swoopier."
We launched into relatively clear weather and headed toward the clouds over Mt. Olympus and the area south of Rivendell. The local area looked very much like the Shire. Every once in a while we would fly through a little patch of rain which gave Stefanie an opportunity to try to take pictures of the rainbow. The sun was in the wrong position to get a complete circle, but she managed to get a few photos with a hint of rainbow. 
Our first stop was the privately-owned location for The Chetwood, where Aragorn led the hobbits when they left Bree. The area is near an area of rocky outcrops and sinkholes around Takaka Hill, which is also a source of Takaka marble. We didn't see many of the sinkholes or the quarry. Fortunately there were no sheep around, which made it possible to land and take pictures, but we didn't go into the forest.
The trip to Mt. Olympus gave Stefanie another chance to get pictures of the rainbow. Unfortunately, a good rainbow requires rain, which makes it hard to see the surrounding scenery through the rainy windows. I think this is a pretty good picture, though. When we finally got to Mt. Olympus, I was struck by this "hooded man" formation, which reminded me of "The Face of Him," the nighttime view of the Coal Sack in "The Mote in God's Eye."
I'm told the Mt. Olympus location was not originally planned for "The Lord of the Rings," but Bill, who was piloting the camera carrier, thought it would be a good location for the rough country south of Rivendell, and the film crew agreed. In the film, the Fellowship looks up from this location to the snowcapped Mt. Caradhras, but the actual mountain seen from this location is not so tall (or white) as the digitally added Redhorn Pass.

I am standing on the rock Legolas was on when he saw the crebain and pointing in the general direction from which they came. Stefanie didn't know what I was doing, so she didn't get in a position to get the picture of my outstretched arm pointing toward Mordor.
Here are Bill and Stefanie standing in the location where Boromir was trying to teach the hobbits how to use a sword, and a wider shot of the area where the Fellowship stopped to eat dinner and hid from the crebain. It was only later that I realized that if Stefanie had backed up about six feet, she would have looked like a hobbit next to Bill, who was standing on a rock.  That's how they made regular people look like hobbits in the film.
We tried to get over the mountains to Mt. Owen and the location of Dimrell Dale in the film, where the Fellowship, minus Gandalf, escaped from Moria. Unfortunately, the ceiling was too low and we had to turn back. Coming back, we crossed this stream, which reminded me of the Dimrell Stair, and the Dimrell River which flowed into Mirrormere, the birthplace of the dwarves. The mist on the top of the mountain reminded me of a volcanic vent, which one might expect to find after the awakening of the Balrog in Moria.
Our final spot was at the Chateau Rhubarbe, which Robyn, Bill's wife, told us about. It was a nice spot to have Sunday lunch before we headed south on the long road to Haast to spend the night. The weather got progressively more overcast, but fortunately there wasn't much rain on the trip. Nevertheless, it was long after dark when we got the Franz Josef and Fox glaciers, so we didn't see much of them.  Maybe next time...
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