Smeagol '03

looks like plum orchard shelter

An inauspicious name. Did she kill any boon companions on the way to get a "birthday present" or fling herself off the Knife Edge thinking it was Mt. Doom?

Not really sure why someone would take that as a trail name. Seriously, I hope she did well.

Plumorchard Shelter? This link shows her sitting in the shelter from a wider angle http://www.whiteblaze.net/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=1056&papass=&sort=1.

I believe her trail name was taken from one of the characters in "Lord of the Rings".

YB, iceman was refering to LotR's character, Golem (aka Smeagol). It is a strange choice for a trailname given the fictional character's story and habbits.

There was another "Smeagol" thru-hiker. Ran into him at Hightop Hut in SNP.

Right,

Smeagol was one of the "River Folk" possible a pre-cursor race to Hobbits or an aboriginal sub-species of hobbits. his friend Deagol found the One Ring while diving in the Anduin River near Gladden Fields where Isildur was ambushed and killed when the Ring betrayed him and fell from his finger as he tried to swim away from the slaughter. The ring washed down river and settled in the mud.

Deagol was essentially a good hearted bloke, but his friend Smeagol had something black eating at the heart of him that the Ring found more desireable and latched onto. Smeagol, using the fact that it was his birthday as pretext, demanded the Ring from Deagol as a "birthday present" and when Deagol refused, Smeagol strangled him and took the Ring. He hid it for a while continuing to live with his grandmother in the River Folk community, but he continued to degenerate into evil and soon was unable to remain in the village as no-one would tolerate his thieving and other crimes any longer. So he fled. Eventually his paranoia (he could sense the shade of Sauron searching for the Ring) and the suspicious eyes of others caused him to seek out dark and solitary places until he grew to hate both the light of the sun and of the moon. He crawled into the roots of the Misty Mountains to hide from and wait for something he did not understand.

Smeagol is in some ways a tragic figure for the Ring magnified his minor villainy into something far worse, torturing both his mind and body over the course of an entire age. Still, there is little to honestly redeem Smeagol/Gollum when taken as a whole. Had he never found the Ring he still would have lived and died an unpleasant character of minor villainy. At his best, Smeagol was merely pathetic, at worst, wicked, cruel and viscious.

That is why I call the choice of name inauspicious. At best, it is the name of a pathetic figure, at worst, an outright villain.