If you ever get a chance to visit the Grand Canyon - do it! It's a magical experience!
GOOGLE has taken its all-seeing eyes on a trip that few
experience: the Colorado River through America’s Grand Canyon.
The search giant partnered with the advocacy group American Rivers
to showcase views of nearly 500km of whitewater rapids, towering red canyon
walls, and rich geological history.
The 360-degree views that went live in Google’s Street View map
option once were reserved largely for rafters who were lucky enough to board a
private trip through the remote canyon, or those willing to pay big bucks to
navigate its whitewater rapids.
Google project lead Karin Tuxen-Bettman hopes the images educate
the public about the US waterway that American Rivers listed as the most
endangered in 2013 due to drought and overuse.
"We hope this inspires viewers to take an active interest in
preserving it,’’ she said.
Federal officials and environmentalists have been raising alarms
recently about demand outstripping supply on the river serving some 40 million
people in seven Western states.
The imagery Google captured from Lees Ferry south of Page to
Pearce Ferry shows signs of drought in a bathtub ring around Lake Mead, and the
impacts of damming the river.
“It’s just a valuable snapshot in time of what the river is like
right now,’’ said Amy Kober of American Rivers.
Google used two rosettes of cameras mounted on two rafts to
capture the imagery in August and then stitched it together. The crew of nearly
20 people, including guides, spent eight mostly sunny days on the river, but got
drenched by rain two of those days.
The company said the river views are the first it has published on
Street View from the United States. In 2011, Google mounted its Street View
trike on a boat and went up the Rio Negro, a tributary of the Amazon,
Tuxen-Bettman said.
The company also has used push carts and snowmobiles to map places
where vehicles cannot travel. In late 2012, Google mapped the most popular
hiking trails at the Grand Canyon using cameras mounted for the first time on a
backpack. Those panoramic views were released in early 2013.
For rafters on the Colorado River, trips
can cost anywhere from several hundred dollars to thousands of dollars a person,
depending on the length and whether they are private or commercial trips. Grand
Canyon National Park limits the number of people who can go on self-guided trips
through a highly competitive lottery system and has an annual cap on the number
of commercial, motorised trips.
One of the first things virtual visitors
might notice is the remoteness of the canyon where rafters spend a few days or
nearly a month navigating whitewater rapids, hiking side canyons, snapping
photos of waterfalls and endangered species, and savouring the solitude. It’s a
place where cellphones don’t work and rafters pack only what they
need.
Rich Harter went on his first commercial
trip in 1997 and has returned for rafting trips six times since. He generally
directs new visitors to the internet to check out videos of rafts flipping over
on the river and the commotion that goes along with it. He said he’ll now use
Google’s Street View of the Colorado River as another introduction to something
that often is indescribable.
“The scale is so immense and the geology
is so varied, and the time frame over which the canyon formed is just so long,’’
he said. “How do you describe these things to people that haven’t seen them? You
can’t.’’
Top Picture: A frame from Google’s moving time-lapse sequence of
images of rafters on the Colorado River in America’s Grand Canyon National
Park. Source: AP
Second picture: A frame from Google’s moving
time-lapse sequence of images in the Grand Canyon. Source: AP
Bottom Picture: Google’s moving time-lapse
sequence of images of rafters on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon National
Park offers a view relatively few get to experience. Source: AP
With many thanks to The
Australian (pay wall)
Video: National Geographic
