We all know that the Nintendo DS is a gaming machine you can take anywhere. But Chris Grubb and Neal Mueller took that idea a bit further recently when they brought Nintendo DSes with them when they climbed Mount Everest, the tallest mountain in the world. Which, unlike the hill behind your house you get winded climbing, is 29,028 feet up, the equivalent of almost 20 Empire State Buildings stacked on top of each other. Granted, they weren't the first to make it to the top of the mountain -- that distinction belongs to Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, who climbed the mountain in May of 1953 -- but what they decided to do on their way there does make them the first mountain climbers to trek onto GameSpy.



GameSpy: Okay, you're planning to climb Mt. Everest. So you pack food, warm clothes, some boots … but a DS?
Neal Mueller: Yeah. In January, we had been climbing in Antarctica, and because of the weather, we were stuck for five days waiting for this Russian cargo plane to pick us up. But there was nothing to do, we were just sitting around in our tents. We played cards and we built a snow cave, but after a while we got bored. And we realized that it would've been cool if we had some video games to play. But we didn't have the money to buy them, so when we were planning this trip, we called Nintendo and asked them if they wanted to sponsor us and send us some DSes.

Chris Grubb: We'd never taken anything like this on our previous trips, we always try to be minimalistic and only take what is absolutely necessary. But after that trip to Antarctica, we realized that entertainment ranked a lot higher on that list than we thought.

Neal Mueller: Mountain climbing involves a lot of physical activity, but it also involves a lot of getting use to the altitude, it takes days for your body to get used to the thin air. And if bad weather comes in, that can last for two or three days. So there's a lot of waiting involved, which is when the DSes came in really handy.

GameSpy: Why not a PSP? Or your GameCube? It has a handle.
Neal Mueller: I grew up playing Nintendo, so it was just obvious for us to contact them first. The DS is also portable and really rugged, and they're wireless, which meant I could play against Chris even if we were in different tents.
GameSpy: Wouldn't it have been smarter to leave the DS at home, thus lightening your load?
Neal Mueller: Well, they are very light. And when you go up to base camp, which is 18 thousand feet, the yaks carry your stuff. But I did have to carry it myself when we went from 18 thousand feet to 26 thousand feet, which isn't a trivial amount of distance, and it's pretty vertical as well. But it's so light, and it's really small, so it doesn't really much at all. Plus, we could charge it with these solar panels, and we had to bring solar panels anyway to charge up the radios and the satellite phone.

Chris Grubb: Though the batteries worked better if you warmed them up with your hands a bit first.