So I actually have a story of bad choices while hiking on Mt. Washington (that luckily did not have a bad ending).
A long time ago I was a young and not entirely knowledgeable rock climber on an east coast road trip with my older and much more experienced, though admittedly slightly reckless safety-wise, climbing partners. We started at my usual haunt, the Gunks in NY, and had the joy of experiencing 100-year level floods. I will always remember that level of flooding and rain because I remember the flooded fields of the farms as we drove to the crags, and the pumpkins (it was September/October) were FLOATING. Roads were closed, it rained nonstop. We caught a few clear days and climbed, or hiked, or hung at the campsite and drank. Whatever we did back then. After about a week of this, I headed out with them on a drive up to NH to climb at all the classic crags, Rumney, Cannon, Whitehorse Ledges, Cathedral Rock. It still was slightly rainy but for the most part had dried up enough that we actually could get some decent climbing in. After almost two weeks of climbing daily we decided to take a rest day. My partners decided it would be fun to hike Mt. Washington. You know, how you do on a rest day after pretty much nonstop rain causing regional flooding all down the east coast.
Now, aside from being a rock climber with not the vastest amount of experience, I was also not a big hiker. I liked to brag that I only hiked to get to the crag. Walking somewhere just for the purpose of walking was BORING. (Guys, don't blame me, I was in my early 20s and to be fair in hindsight my partners were kind of shitheads so I didn't have the best influences). I was like, 'Uhm, ok." Basically that was our prep. They had an idea of a trail, and this honestly explains my level of personal responsibility on this trip, I still don't know what trail we hiked. I just remember that they said, 'well its not one of the trails that is recommended, but we don't want to be BORING DO WE.' No, I most assuredly did not. So we stopped at the ranger station to poke around and I offered to sign us in to the ledger to which they assured me we did not want the Rangers to have our information because then they might come looking for us or something awful like that! (I know I know, in hindsight I am not sure what the actual hell I was thinking but this fits into those guys off-the-grid type of style). So we went on our easy little rest day hike.
The trail was a mess. Flooding everywhere, whole sections of the trail covered up by raging water that we had to precariously cross. The trail we ascended was steep, and had several sections of probably 3rd or even 4th class slab that was just drenched and in some parts even running water. If you hike or climb you know that wet slab is not something you want to be on. The hike was awful, one of the most miserable experiences in my life. We got to the top and unanimously decided not to go back the way we came as the thought of descending that wet slab was terrifying. We made it back, after who knows how long, and collapsed into our sleeping bags luckily to climb again another day.
That day scared me so much, in hind sight, that afterwards I took a look at my perceptions of personal responsibiity, risk taking etc. At the time I was just doing what I thought people or climbers did. After that I decided to no longer be just a passive member of a team, I wasn't going to end up in that scary and very dangerous situation again.
And I never climbed with those guys again.