Climbing Everest in 3d

The Discovery Channel has created an impressive looking 3d climb of Mount Everest.

The Everest Avalanche Tragedy website explores the tragic accident which killed sixteen Nepalese guides on 8th April.  The avalanche occurred near Everest Base Camp on the southern side of Mount Everest and resulted in the deaths of the sixteen guides and serious injuries to nine other guides.

The site includes an interesting 3d ascent of the mountain. In effect the climb is just a video of (what I assume is) a 3d map of Everest. However the video is linked to an elevation scale and as the video plays you can keep track of the rising elevation.

The visualization itself is fairly simple but is also quite impressive. Creating something similar would be fairly straightforward by creating and videoing a Google Earth tour and then using JavaScript to create links from the video to other elements on the webpage.