What does it take to chronicle the slopes of Canada's mountains for Google Street View? A dash of ingenuity, a little MacGyvering and the ability to have some fun along the way.

Google's Street View team shot the slopes at Canada's Whistler Blackcomb ski resort with a tricked out snowmobile. They equipped the snowmobile with a Street View camera system that was pulled together using duct tape, and extra hard drives. They also mounted the cameras on SUVs to drive on the snow-covered roads.

The results are impressive: You can stand on top of a mountain, exactly where skiers will be starting their runs, and "ski" downhill from there, viewing relatively high-resolution images the whole way. The little Street View man even turns into a skier in the Street View interface.

"The motivation to really get this project going was you have to the upcoming 2010 Olympics here and we wanted to try and capture some beautiful imagery so everyone can experience what it is really like to be up on the slopes," says Daniel Ratner, senior mechanical engineer at Google in the video below.

Google's Street View team has been fairly creative in its efforts to capture the details of all terrain. Last year, they mounted cameras on a tricycle to gain access to places in Britain that cars can’t reach such as coastal paths and sports arenas.

Google's Street View blog offers a nice behind-the-scenes look at how the view from the snowmobile translated into the 3-D view for Google maps.

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Photos: Google Blog