Doug -
I've been thinking about risk for the past few hours, and - ever read Thor Heyerdahl? The accounts of his expeditions, especially involving the Kon-Tiki, and his later expeditions enthralled me when I was a teenager and later, as many of his expeditions were occurring as I was growing up. Setting aside for a moment where people came from who inhabited the Micronesian islands - just imagine the level of risk-taking people must have undertaken to build a small boat, stock it with food and water, and just head out across the oceans. And it wasn't just testosterone-poisoned males, either - the men had to convince their girlfriends and wives to accompany them as well.
Who knows what motivated them to take such huge risks, not just once, but on multiple occasions? Maybe it was starvation, or pestilence, or dramatic climate change? Or maybe we've mutated/evolved so that we evaluate risk differently. We'll probably never know why they did what they did, but Heyerdahl demonstrated a plausible how they did it.
As for the young men who spent the night on the summit of Baldy (San Antonio) - don't quote me on this, but I think they're college students.