Do tell 
I thought you'll never ask! Joke aside, in the end it matters less what I did if the shot is not working.
But as I raised the subject and you asked, some of the stuff that led to this. I was there with the family and we were going back in the city. It was quite cloudy/gloomy but I was quite hopeful that the sun will show under the clouds at sunset, so I decided that I will leave them at the hotel and go back to a trail that I spotted earlier and which offered a view of some surrounding peaks. Those peaks caught my attention a couple of days before but had no where to stop at that time. So this was roughly 1.5 hours until I was able to be back. Then as I walked on the trail the sun started to show up as expected but initially I had just a glimpse with the spectacle being on the other side of the mountain where I knew it was another pretty good spot in a parking area; I was very tempted to leave and go there, but I thought that I will have a shot like everybody else and by the time I get there the sun might be gone.
As the sun came in between the mountains with the glorious light, it started raining. The wind was already blowing quite hard from the front which meant the lens was getting covered immediately in raindrops. For once I had with me a piece of tissue to wipe the lens but as I said, it was getting covered within a second. So in order to get something, I switched to manual focus and exposure, was staying in front of the camera, wiping the lens and moving out as I was pressing the shutter. I still got some raindrops but few enough to deal with them in Photoshop. I had to shoot bracketed also, this is a 3 shot mix. I have one from a single shot but didn't look as good and I had obvious banding in the highlights (apparently I'm one of the few that can get it on the Z7). Oh, going out wearing all my layers was quite helpful too.
Here an example of how it looked if I didn't wipe the lens
