Google takes would-be Yosemite climbers to new heights
LOS ANGELES -- There are plenty of maps and apps that can guide you to Yosemite National Park.
But what if you want to see the top of El Capitan?
You can climb -- or just click.
This week, Google took its Street View technology off road and straight up the imposing 3,000 foot wall of El Capitan.
"We honestly, when we started, had no idea if it would actually work," said Deanna Yick, program manager for Google Street View. "How are we functionally going to do this? How are we gonna rig this contraption to the side of this vertical cliff?"
They did it by mounting cameras on three of the world's most elite climbers -- and on the rock face itself, so that you can see just how precarious things are looking from their perspective.
Tommy Caldwell, who gained notoriety earlier this year for free climbing El Capitan's Dawn Wall, is one of the Google climbers.
"The ability to share that energy that we climbers derive from being in positions like that, that's just incredibly cool for me," Caldwell told CBS News. "It just transports you to that space."
"This is a perspective that only these top climbers are able to see, and to see what they see is just remarkable," Yick said.
"It's just way more of an interactive experience," Caldwell added. "You get a fuller picture than you do from video footage or even a still photo. You get to see the texture of the rock and the size of the holes that we're grabbing."
Yick told CBS News technology is opening windows to places few might dare to go -- including her.
"My fear of heights would prevent me from ever doing this myself," she said.
Now all those spectacular and horrifying views can be seen without ever leaving the ground.
