The traveller foolish or desperate enough to approach the headwaters of the Sunset River will see these icy waters flowing down from Shadow Springs Gap, the pass between Saint Martin's Peak and the Middlemount on the west, and the fearsome Orcrag on the east. The first few hundred lengths of the river are walled in by massive and ancient stone River Walls constructed by dwarves ages ago and beyond the skill of orcs or other miscreants to destroy.
At length, making your way upstream against the rushing, icy current, you will see the Shadow Springs Cave from which the river gushes up out of the mountain. Above the gushing spring, a low, shelving cave reaches a short distance back up into the side of the mountain, and there is nothing (save sometimes another goblin) to see in this cave.
However, recessed into the floor of this cave near its back, a small tunnel opening may be discovered after a careful search. It leads adventurers into a smooth-hewn tunnel, obviously of ancient dwarvish construction, that curves upward and to the right inside the mountain itself. This is the Shadow Spring Gallery, by which the dwarves of old came down out of their splendid labyrinth of caves and chambers, to draw pure water from its source at the origins of the river.
The Shadow Spring Gallery is less than 200 lengths long, ending in a small flat landing which it shares with two other tunnel entrances deep inside the mountain. Coming up from the Spring, the tunnel that runs on straight ahead from this junction is the Bridge Gallery, leading even more steeply upward and back to the left (to the northwest again), to emerge high above and give access to the hanging bridge strung across Shadow Gap. The tunnel that turns off to the right from this landing is the Temple Gallery, leading off on a much more straight and level course toward the northeast, deep beneath the Orcrag itself, and beyond to the ancient ruined Temple of the Dwarves.
