Climbing Everest with iPad and iPhone

National Geographic magazine reports that ski-mountaineer Hilaree O’Neill — a member of its 2012 Everest expedition — will follow the same route Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay did in 1953, but with an iPad and iPhone in her backpack. iPad gives O’Neill a journaling device with a solid-state data storage drive usable at altitudes where spinning hard disk drives have been known to fail. And with cell service available even on Everest’s summit, she’ll use an iPhone 4S to stay in touch instead of a cumbersome walkie-talkie.