There was a time when we used to take references from our family members and friends to travel distant places and find out routes. Then came Google Maps that changed the entire way of locating a place and Street View completely took millions of travelers off the hook.
With photographs taken at distant places right from your best friend's corridor to the favorite restaurant, the Google maps became the ultimate travel guide and now, the technological giant is taking a deep plunge from the roads to the mountains. Yes you have heard it right! After years of showing the way on the land, the Google map is set to rule the sky.
Four mountain peaks: Asia's Everest base camp that remains snow capped throughout the year offering a picturesque view, Africa's Mount Kilimanjaro famous for its dormant volcanic eruption, Europe's Elbrus Mountain and Argentina's Aconcagua are the chosen ones to represent their own galleries in the Google Maps. A user can chose any of the mountain peaks to see and view the mesmerizing and captivating beauty of them and can see the trail click by click. One is just required to choose the mountain peak of his or her choice and experience a breath-taking panoramic view from there.
An expert from Google's Google Map team, Dan Fredinburg has witnessed the mesmerizing experience all by himself. According to him and some of his team members who have climbed atop the mountain ranges to bring in those photographs from the mountain peaks, they were amazed to see some spine-chilling and some endearing things out there. Endearing was the view of the snow capped mountain ranges that they have snapped and took it along and spine-chilling were the pictures of the skulls and skeletons that they found while on their way.
Google Maps has its entire logistics system well into place to take the shots from the mountain ranges. With equipment like trolleys, snowmobiles, pushcarts, trikes, backpack camera and others, mountain trekking would be a bit difficult with such a heavy load. So instead of carrying state-of the art equipment and heavy tripods, they chose to take a digital camera and a fish eye lens.
The nightmares of the Google Team set to capture the peaks were coming true when they had to experience muddy cliffs, rain storm and an Earthquake as well. But still the sheer determination of the team to get back with some of the best snaps to their boot camp gave them courage to fight all that and emerge triumph. Even though the team consisted of professional mountaineers, it would be impossible to shot perfect images in the middle of the night amidst an earthquake or atop a slippery mountain peak but the team did just that. Well amidst the obstacles, those who benefitted from all these is definitely the millions of users who can experience real life trekking experience and get a sneak peek to the unexplored world, thanks to Google Maps.