Google's Street View has long since left the confines of streets, offering ground-level views of national parks, landmarks and remote destinations from around the world, but the company still has a long ways to go before it runs out of "firsts" to capture.
The latest is what Google calls its first vertical Street View: a not-for-the-queasy climb of Yosemite's El Capitan rock wall. It is a feat that may also coincidentally have the added benefit of helping to bury search results for a certain other El Capitan.
That was done with the help of famed climbers Lynn Hill, Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell who, along with some photographers, scaled a number of different routes to offer a taste of what climbing El Capitan is like from their perspective. Thankfully, they weren't lugging the usual Street View backpack up with them, although, as Caldwell explains in a blog post, capturing the trek wasn't quite as simple as simple as strapping a GoPro onto a helmet.
"After some testing," he writes, "we used our tried-and-true climbing gear like cams and ropes to make sure the camera wouldn't fall to the ground in the middle of our Street View collection."
Caldwell later added that, "Alex took the camera and pretty much ran 3,000 feet up with photographer partner Brett Lowell" to capture the famous "Nose" route up El Capitan.
You can check out the video below for a closer look at the endeavor and start your own virtual climb on Google's Street View Treks page.
