Was never sure why Scott was romanticized for killing himself and his crew with gross negligence. I do feel the tug of ascetic adventure, though- the notion that you're strong/resourceful enough to make it out on your own without the benefits of modern technology is a difficult one to stamp out. Just in case. (Just in case what, you're renditioned from your suburban life, dropped in the middle of Siberia and abandoned to rediscover civilization?) It's also kind of stupid, though. Before the benefits of modern technology, people stuck together, because the rugged individualist got gobbled up or else leg-broke and terminally useless. So the idea of survival "on your own" is maybe laughably modern. Better to go backpacking with some friends for a couple days with plenty of well-designed stuff, then.
I get the allure. The thing is, you get complacent like in everything else. I was hiking every weekend. It was no big deal. Until I was hiking above the snowline in shorts with 70lbs of cameras and new boots and nobody knew where I was and it was sunset and I was lost and all of a sudden I'm overlanding 6 miles outside Granite Falls so I don't have to cuddle up with my Lowepro Nova 4 as temps dip to 30. Without little wake-up calls like that it's easy to say "I don't need this" or "I don't need that" and "it's more of an adventure without" because you don't understand that you're one wrong turn from catastrophe and that things go from "adventure" to "disaster" faster than you can even work up a sweat. And I think it's a more common experience among people who don't sweat much.