Climb Virtually Up “El Capitan,” Yosemite’s Iconic Rock Wall, With Google Street View

Google has used its Street View tech­nol­o­gy to let you take vir­tu­al tours of some far-flung places — places like Shackleton’s Antarc­tic, Mt. Ever­est and oth­er high moun­tain peaks, The Ama­zon Riv­er, and The Grand Canyon. Now you can add to the list, El Cap­i­tan, the icon­ic rock wall in the mid­dle of Yosemite Nation­al Park.

Yes­ter­day, Google’s offi­cial blog declared, “Today we’re launch­ing our first-ever ver­ti­cal Street View col­lec­tion, giv­ing you the oppor­tu­ni­ty to climb 3,000 feet up the world’s most famous rock wall: Yosemite’s El Cap­i­tan. To bring you this new imagery, we part­nered with leg­endary climbers Lynn Hill, Alex Hon­nold and Tom­my Cald­well.” Above, you can see this trio in action, talk­ing about what makes El Cap a mec­ca for rock climbers every­where.

To cre­ate this Street View of El Cap­i­tan, Hill, Hon­nold and Cald­well worked with Google engi­neers to fig­ure out how to haul a cam­era up this sheer rock face. And what you ulti­mate­ly get are some amaz­ing 360-degree panoram­ic images. Accord­ing to Cald­well, these “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.” Which, hat­ing heights, is good enough for me.

via Google Blog

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