Recommended Website:
Everest: The Interactive Tour
This website (a feature of The Tech Museum in San Jose, CA) offers two ways to take an interactive tour of Mount Everest, the most famous, notorious, and highest mountain peak in the world. When you get to the site you can choose a Shockwave tour complete with sound and special effects (you can download shockwave for free at the site), or take an HTML tour (no audio, interactivity).
The photographs are stunning, produced from the IMAX film about Everest. You visit Kathmandu in Nepal and learn a bit about the people and culture. Then, take the road to base camp and learn about family villages in the foothills of the Himalaya Mountains. Visit Base Camp and find out how it is constructed each year. Cross the treacherous Khumbu Icefall, one of the most dangerous parts of the trek to the mountain summit. Visit other camps along the way as you approach “Summit Day.” Summit Day arrives and you virtually climb to Everest’s peak at 29,028 feet above sea level, where the oxygen is 33% of sea level. Find out about the toll Everest has taken in human lives, and about the environmental toll of human treks to Everest.
This is a spectacular virtual tour. Take the whole family on a cyber-journey to the top of the world.
