Google Street View Goes Vertical With Yosmite's El Capitan
MOUNTAIN VIEW (CBS SF) -- Google Maps is treading on new ground by taking its horizontal view mapping system 3,000 feet up the world's most famous rock wall: Yosemite's El Capitan.
Google launched the first-ever vertical Street View collection Wednesday, giving people the chance to climb side-by-side with legendary climbers like Lynn Hill, Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell.
When Google asked Caldwell, who made headlines in January for completing the first free ascent of Dawn Wall in January, to help map out different El Capitan routes, he didn't hesitate in responding.
"Yosemite has been such an important part of my life that telling the story of El Capitan through Street View was right up my alley—especially when it meant working with the Google engineers to figure out some absurd challenges," he said.
Caldwell, Honnold and Hill strapped cameras as they scaled El Capitan's sheer vertical face and collected images to document their every move.
The three also created a new Yosemite Treks page -- a kind of virtual field trip complete with a tour and behind the scenes discussion where you can learn more about climbing.
This isn't the first remote destination the Street View teams has captured. Cameras were spotted atop the hump of a camel in the southern deserts of the United Arab Emirates last fall, and more recently mapping life underneath the ocean in the South Pacific.
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