I personally have not had a lot of experiences with lightning, but perhaps this is because I read up on the subject and tend to bug out to safer ground when the storming starts.

There was an incident a few years ago where we (my hiking group) went on a dayhike to Mt Givens, around 10,000 feet or so. Went off trail up a ridge and climbed boulders to the top. There was the remnants of a weather station up there - all this mangled metal in the boulders around us as we ate lunch. I was just tossing back the last bite of my string cheese when I turned around and saw the clouds - my immediate response was "OH#&$*, WE GOTTA GET DOWN OFF THIS" leading to a dozen hikers hopping rock to rock while tucking stuff in daypacks. The darkest meanest looking clouds were coming up on us from the south - to the north we were blue skies and white puffy clouds.

We made the four miles back to the cars parked at Kaiser pass in record time, and just as I shut the door the clouds let loose! We drove past a lightning fire on the way down toward Shaver, and fire trucks were going the other way to deal with it since it was close to Sierra Summit ski resort.

We had been hiking on a pretty exposed ridge most of the way, but could have dropped a few hundred feet into trees once off the mountain itself. I am surprised it did not rain on us before we got down to the cars. We could see the rain and lightning just a few miles away.