In WWII, mountaineers and climbers of the American Alpine Club, along with the American Ski Patrol Committee worked with the War Dept to form the 10th Mountain Division which IIRC is currently active in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Check out the American Alpine Club and 10th Mountain Division...see if you think ego plays any roll in it.
If there's a necessary purpose behind the activity, then absolutely, but to take these risks in the kind of weather there for no reason other than personal gratification is about ego.