This is my comment on a picture posted on Facebook by lengendary climber/photographer, Ed Cooper.

This is the picture he posted.

Looks to me like that metal pipe would make the lightning strikes more common.
And speaking of lightning strikes...
I did the Ptarmigan Traverse in 1988 - which happens to be the 50th anniversary of the original traverse in July 1938 by four members of the Ptarmigan Climbing Club. I copied a couple of entries in the Sentinel Peak summit register, one put there by two sons of a member of that original Traverse, into my trip log notebook...

I neglected to take a picture of that fascinating entry so when I did the Traverse again in 1991 I wanted a photo of that entry. (I also wanted proof that some guys from a "Brown Bomber Climbing Club" had an entry in that register. I'd seen Whitey Ford's name in several registers on previous climbs in the central Cascades...) However when I got back on top Sentinel Peak this is what I found...

The USGS had installed two metal pipes on Sentinel's summit for mounting their instruments collecting data on the movement of the South Cascades Glacier below Sentinel. The rocks on that summit looked like they had been pulverized by lightning strikes and apparently one of the strikes had hit the register blowing the entry book to smithereens.