Mount Gundabad

The mountain of Durin's waking

Gundabad rises at the point where the Misty Mountains meet the Grey Mountains, north of the sources of the Anduin and far beyond any road of the late Third Age. Among the Longbeards it was remembered as the place where Durin I, the eldest of the Seven Fathers, woke from the sleep in which Aulë had laid him, and from which he set out south to find Mirrormere and found Khazad-dûm. Unfinished Tales adds that the mountain was held sacred by all the Dwarves and that in ancient days it was a meeting-place of their kindreds. The desecration of the site by orcs was a grievance that the Dwarves never let go.

The orc-capital of the North

The orcs of Melkor and later of Sauron took Gundabad in the Second Age, and from then on it was the principal stronghold of the orcs north of Moria. When Angmar rose in T.A. 1300 the orcs of Gundabad served the Witch-king and swelled the raids on Arnor. The Dwarves stormed it at the start of the War of the Dwarves and Orcs in 2793, hunting Azog's people from Gundabad southward through every hold to the Gladden, but they did not stay to garrison it. Within a century and a half the orcs were back in strength. In 2941 Bolg, son of Azog, marched from Gundabad with a great host of goblins and wargs to avenge the Great Goblin and seize the treasure of Smaug, and the greater part of that army was destroyed at the Battle of Five Armies. Gundabad is not named again in the records of the War of the Ring, and after Sauron's fall the orcs of the mountains dwindled.

The northernmost peak of the Misty Mountains, at the junction with the Grey Mountains, north-east of Angmar and north of the headwaters of Anduin.