Celebdil

The westernmost of the three famed Mountains of Moria that stood over the old Dwarf-city of Khazad-dûm in the Misty Mountains. Celebdil was the mountain's Elvish name, a translation of Dwarvish Zirakzigil that meant 'silver point', 'silver spike' or (the common Mannish translation) 'Silvertine'. This name reflected the mountain's form, as its silver-grey peak rose and tapered to a single narrow pinnacle.¹

Atop the pinnacle of the mountain stood a single tower, Durin's Tower, carved from the mountain in ages past by the Dwarves of Khazad-dûm. It could be reached only by a long spiralling stairway, the Endless Stair, that ran up from the depths beneath Celebdil through its living rock to reach its peak. From the tower a window looked out over the clouds that enfolded the Mountains of Moria, opening onto a narrow gallery far above the mists.

Durin's Tower had been made in such an ancient time that it had passed into legend among even the Dwarves, but the forgotten tower looked out from Celebdil's peak for at least two ages of the world. That ended on 23 January III 3019, when two ancient beings burst into the sunlight of the peak. These were Gandalf and the Balrog known as Durin's Bane, who had been fighting one another in the deep darkness far below Moria, and had passed up the Endless Stair through the rock of Celebdil to emerge at Durin's Tower.

In the ferocity of the Battle of the Peak that followed, Durin's Tower was destroyed, and when Gandalf threw his enemy to its death, it broke the mountainside in its fall. Gandalf, too, fell in that battle, and his body lay on the peak of Celebdil for twenty days before he was returned to life, and rescued from the height by the Eagle Gwaihir.