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Google scales El Capitan for first-ever vertical Street View collection

Google scales El Capitan for first-ever vertical Street View collection

By James Vincent, a senior reporter who has covered AI, robotics, and more for eight years at The Verge.

Source Google

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Apple may have named the next version of Mac OS X after El Capitan, but Google has tackled the 3,000-foot granite monolith in person. The search giant has added Yosemite Valley's El Capitan to its list of Street View conquests, partnering with legendary climbers Lynn Hill, Alex Honnold, and Tommy Caldwell to capture mapping data thousands of feet up in the air. The variety of images produced by the project is phenomenal, and includes 360-degree panoramas of climbers midway up the wall and taking a rest at night, as well as a Street View route to click through of the climb up the Nose of El Capitan.

Alex Honnold takes on El Capitan's Texas Flake. (Google)

"Climbing is all about flirting with the impossible and pushing the boundaries of what you think you can be done," writes Tommy Caldwell in a blog post for Google. "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."

Read next: The OS X El Capitan review.

For a closer look at how Caldwell and Google's engineers met the challenges of capturing Street View imagery on the side of a sheer rock face, you can check out Google's blog or watch the behind the scenes footage below:

Verge Video: First look at El Capitan

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