Did you not read where Oak nailed it in one?
The knob!
:smack:
I’m thinking if the party had made it intact past Moria and past Boromir’s weakness (another really big if) that Shelob would be best off letting the party pass undisturbed. Shelob was in the end no match for Sam once his fear was conquered. Fear was Shelob’s (and all the bad guys’) go to weapon. Sam with Aragorn, Gandalf, Boromir, Legolas and Gimli would squish Shelob like a garden spider. The real trick would be sneaking past the orcs at Cirith Ungol and across Mordor.
As noted above,it was never the plan for the entire party to go all the way to Mordor. Boromir and Aragorn were ALWAYS meant for Minas Tirith, and I can’t believe that Gandalf ever meant to take Pippin into Mordor, or that Elrond would have consented to the plan in that event.
Some friend of Treebeard? 
Boromir, certainly, but I think Aragorn was still making up his mind on that one right up until Frodo and Sam ditched the rest.
Ithn’t Tom Zotthir Cirith Ungol?
Whathabout Cyrith Aunght?
This may get filed under Most Ironic Post/Username Combo. 
Plus, I think there was tremendous value in simply getting the Ring moving. The longer the Ring stayed in one location, the more vulnerable it was. At Rivendell, they had a one-up on the Nazguls for once, and Gandalf certainly could have expected them to be re-dispatched for the Ringbearer at any point in time. The Ring could not stay there and it was best for Sauron to have the least idea of where on Middle Earth it was, and what Gandalf’s plan was.
Frankly, I think Gandalf was desperate to move the Ring and was simply hoping for the best. Certainly, he must have held out some hope that Galadriel would have some useful advice for the next step after Lorien. Given that Gandalf is basically an angel, I don’t think it’s unusual for him to believe in divine providence; he, and the Fellowship, had to put in the blood, sweat, and tears and hope for the best, due to the lack of a better choice. After all, they had been awfully lucky up to that point; Gandalf missed his connection, but Aragorn connected with the hobbits; they had escaped (just barely) from the Nazguls at Weathertop; they had Glorfindel help them at the last minute when crossing the Anduin. They were scraping by, by the skin of their teeth, but progressing.
I think a substantial part of Gandalf also feared he was doomed to fail, but he was simply holding out as best he could. As Gandalf the Grey, and having found out the leader of the Order had betrayed him, he had precious little hope to go on. He was fumbling to try to something constructive, and move the Ring closer to Mount Doom in a general sense until a better plan surfaced.
In the end, he was right to act on such impulse. Without Gandalf the White, could the War have been won? Would he have been able to resist Saruman’s control of Theoden King? Would Saruman have taken control of the party at Isengard, or caused even more mayhem (escaping from Treebeard sooner)? While Moria was at the time a complete disaster, it set the right events in motion. Gandalf died for a purpose and came back as the weapon the Free Peoples needed. It was not until Boromir’s corruption and death that a true disaster happened to the group.
Exactly. What was decided in Rivendell? They coudn’t use the ring. They couldn’t hide the ring, not with any hope that it wouldn’t eventually be found. They couldn’t keep the ring safe by force of arms. They couldn’t send it beyond Sauron’s reach. And any attempt to defeat Sauron was beyond their strength. Their only hope lay in getting the ring into Mt. Doom.
As long as the ring was moving in that direction, there was hope. The specifics would work themselves out as Providence provided. Gandalf was great at improvisation, and had worked his way into and out of Dol Guldur while Sauron was in residence there. So he would have good reason to think that he could penetrate Mordor.
But even if he didn’t have a firm plan, I think he probably had a few ideas on where some good spots to try were. After all he did spend several months in close consolation with one of the military commanders who had successfully besieged the country. While three millennia would make much of the info out of date, the geographic features like lesser passes should still be good.
When, exactly, do you postulate that that happened??? And which military commander are you talking about?
You know, that’s an excellent point : I remember Gandalf saying something along the lines of Gollum “still having his part to play” as a reason why he didn’t simply off him instead of leaving him with the elves. Maybe he expected Gollum would wind up finding the Fellowship down the line (drawn to the Ring and all that), at which point he could have done what Frodo and Sam did : make him lead the way. Better do it this way than lug him all the way from Rivendell and give him Eru knows how many opportunities to screw them over.
Or maybe Gollum had already told him about the path, possibly without mentioning Shelob but c’mon, Gandalf iced a balrog. A big bug ain’t gonna slow him down. Especially one that’s intimidated by a magic flashlight.
I understood that Gandalf went to Middle Earth’s version of Okinawa and trained with the wizard Miyagi… when all else failed, at the moment of sheer defeat, he would use the crane technique and kick Mordor butt…
Erm. The reason he didn’t “simply off him” is that that’s NOT WHAT THE HEROES DO in LotR. Gollum is snivelling and miserable and wretched and wicked, but that’s not enough for Frodo, Bilbo, Aragorn, Faramir or ESPECIALLY NOT GANDALF to kill him. Particularly not in cold blood.
As for “teleport” c’mon people, everyone knows you can’t reliably teleport to somewhere you’re not familiar with. “Find the Path”? Yeah. 'cause if I were a fallen angel of unspeakable power who has had thousands of years to prepare his fortress kingdom, I’m sure some run of the mill “I can’t find my keys” sort of divination is just what would get you in. 
To answer the question seriously - it’s never answered specifically in the books - I think Gandalf thought there was a good chance the doors would be standing open. He mentions that they normally were left open. Failing that, he figured he knew just about every kind of opening spell there was and that it shouldn’t prove much of a challenge. On that count he was mistaken, but mostly due to his expecting it to be more challenging than it actually was.
Umm… Elrond, Gil-glad’s second in command? When Eregion was invaded in 1695 SA, Gil-galad sent a relief army under his top commander (Elrond) to their aid. They were too few and too late. After being driven off, Elrond established a fortress/refuge east along the dwarf road to keep an army on Sauron’s flanks and to keep a line of communication open across the Misty Mountains. This refuge was known as Imladris/Rivendell.
Over 1700 years later Rivendell was the command headquarters of the Last Alliance; both Gil-galad and Elendil lived in Rivendell as they directed the first few years of that great war. And when they marched out to besiege Mordor Elrond went as the equivalent of Gil-galad’s Aide-de-camp. For seven years, Elrond was one of the chief commanders of the army in and around Mordor. I would expect him to be as close to an expert as you would likely find on Mordor and its environs, much in the way General U.S. Grant’s Aide-de-camp John Rawlins would have been a pretty good resource on Petersburg, Virginia.
And Gandalf spent late October to late December 3018 TA sitting in Rivendell discussing the ring, the war, and how to achieve their goals. I’m sure Elrond would have given him every piece of information he had.
Gandalf could totally ice Shelob by accidentally his flashlight.
He does say that, but we don’t know for sure he was right. Aragorn was wrong about other things. Honestly, I can’t believe that Gandalf didn’t have some kind of a fairly specific idea.
Edit: I guess the “depend on divine providence” thing is plausible.
A whole flashlight?