Mountain Climbers Help Google Create First Vertical Street View Of Yosemite's El Capitan

By Kamal Nayan - 24 Jun '15 11:38AM

Google has partnered with legendary climbers to create the first vertical Street View of Yosemite's El Capitan.

The search-engine partnered with Lynn Hill, Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell, who hauled a camera up the full 3,000-feet.

Climbing El Capitan remains an incredible challenge, and a dangerous one at that: The NPS regularly launches rescue operations to save climbers, and there are occasional climbing-related deaths, Washington Post notes.

There were two facets to the venture - one involved capturing the climbers in various iconic spots up the cliff. Then, Honnold was tasked with collecting imagery of the whole route of The Nose on El Capitan, as Venture Beat notes.

"Climbing is all about flirting with the impossible and pushing the boundaries of what you think you can be done," Caldwell wrote in a blog post. "Capturing Street View imagery 3,000 feet up El Capitan proved to be an extension of that, especially when you take a camera meant for the inside of a restaurant and mount it thousands of feet up the world's most iconic rock wall."

"These 360-degree panoramic images are the closest thing I've ever witnessed to actually being thousands of feet up a vertical rock face - better than any video or photo," Caldwell added. "But my hope is that this new imagery will inspire you to get out there and see Yosemite for yourself ... whether you travel up a rock wall or just down the trail."