On popular summits, I try to operate away from the trig point/cairn/other summit marker if practical unless there’s no protection from adverse weather elsewhere in the AZ.
In any case, I have found people friendly - including a farmer who raced up on his all-terrain vehicle initially to complain about my 10m pole and quad-band dipole on his land - once they understand what I’m doing there.
The exception was last week on G/LD-022 Seat Sandal early morning, alone on the summit. Suddenly a woman appeared. I was already sitting in a drystone windbreak out of the 3C icy wind and had a lot of my gear unpacked. She said she was local and an amateur photographer and wanted to take photos of the (lovely) views including where I was sitting (strange). I willingly volunteered to step away for a bit for her photos but she wanted all my stuff removed too. At this point, I politely declined saying I was already cold (true) and didn’t want to repack everything and move away from the summit.
She then said people who sit too long [duration undefined] at summits are called ‘summit hoggers’ - a term new to me. I hadn’t unpacked my radio gear yet. I asked for clarification in case I had misheard [it was very windy]. Did ‘summit hoggers’ refer to people who sit at the summit (“Yes of course!”) or someone who expects everyone else to vacate the summit so they can have it to themselves, e.g. for photos (“Oh no! Certainly not.”).
I activated the summit pretty quickly on 2m but abandoned my plans to do HF as she said she would return shortly. I asked her, didn’t everyone have an equal right to be at the summit, to sit, enjoy the view, eat lunch, warm up again, take photos? Isn’t “summit hogger” a derogatory term?
I guess the point of my [long] story is that – although she may be the one exception – I get the impression some summit visitors resent not having the place to themselves. Maybe it’s only a problem in tourist area like G/LD. A good reason to be as low profile as possible.