I'm sure I've brought this up before and no doubt someone yelled at me then too but I never really bought into turn around times and rigid, time based goals. I've never used them at any point in my hiking "career" either now or as a newbie. The concept that some absolute time decided on at home or in the parking lot never made sense to me. I hike alone most of the time but even when I hike with a friend it's pretty much the same process. I suppose in large groups it needs to be a consideration. I feel like most people use a turnaround time specifically just to get out of the woods before dark (and in many cases probably because they don't carry a light source).
Until you are actually out on the trail, observing the conditions and getting a sense of your overall stamina, mental state and physical condition, determining what is or isn't doable seems very arbitrary. I always went off my gut feel of how I was feeling relative to the potential risk of what I was undertaking. Being knowledgeable and prepared greatly influences this decision making. This is an ongoing process revisited many, many times throughout the day, not something you decide at a specific time on a watch. I'll significantly lengthen or shorten a hike quite often, and the time of day rarely hasn't anything to do with it. (And when it does it usually involves prior plans back in civilization or maybe a good craft beer).
I am with you and rarely have used turn-around-times, as long as I am ok mentally and physically, as I do not mind hiking after dark, which is a given in SAR missions,
In my first winter hike with the famous John Swanson (first to hike the 770, early wNortheast 111/115 and wNHHH, etc), three of us got a late start on Abraham in Maine after their late arrival in Stratton following an AMC-led trip to the Bonds, IIRC.
There were supposed to be far more than the three of us, but the others bailed after their long hike and drive the previous day. The third member of our group had shorter legs than John and I, so the two of us did all the trail breaking in very deep untracked snow. The old cabin was pretty much buried in snow except for the upper part of the front door.
Being a longtime NJ/NYC AMC leader, John had a turn-around time that caught up with us when we were still well below tree-line. For the next hour, I kept prodding him to push back our turn-around time until we reached tree-line, when I knew that summit fever would kick in.
I had not been on Abraham’s summit previously but John had and recognized the fire tower wreckage in the dark to know that we were on the summit. Our better-rested, shorter-legged companion blew us into the proverbial dust on the descent, arriving at the trailhead a good half hour ahead of us. Very glad that we did not turn around on this summit as it was long drive to get there.
Ps, John later rationalized that because I was there and the others were not, our hike was no longer a sanctioned AMC trip, in which case we would have been bound to the turn-around time.
