Two twenty-somethings are on their way to becoming the youngest people in history to ascend the world's tallest mountains on all seven continents and they're taking the Nintendo DS with them.

Neal Mueller, 27, and Chris Grubb, 25, left for Nepal on Monday headed for Mt. Everest and the two say they are bringing the DS with them. If they top the mountain, it will be the first video game system in history to make the trek.

The two say they got the idea when they were stranded for a day waiting for a Russian cargo plane on a previous climb. They think it will be fun to be able to lay in their coffin-like one-person tents at night playing wireless Metroid Hunters and sending hand drawn pictures of their asses to one another using Pictochat.

"Climbing mountains like Mt. Everest is 10 hours of tough climbing, with hours of nothing to do once the sun goes down," Muller said. "We thought the DS would be perfect because we can play games wirelessly against each other, as well as draw pictures and send messages. When we were waiting for that (Russian cargo) plane, all we had to do was play Hearts for hours. Believe me, that can get old."

Nintendo is appartenly psyched because the climb will give their engineers some much needed data on the effects of high altitudes and sub-zero temperatures on the handheld. Because, you never know when you're gonna have to break out your DS on an attempt to reach the top of the world. I sure hope they're bringing that hand-crank charger with them, because I seriously doubt the batteries are gonna last the trip.

Nintendo Power will be hosting a series of pictures and video from the trip and may even make it possible for people to send their own Pictochat pictures of ass and boobies to the two as they travel with their DSes.

I can already see it: They're gonna find these two frozen solid, hands still clutching their DSes with a copies of Yoshi Touch & Go running on the screens. Damn you Yoshi, you're entertaining and addictive game has claimed two more lives.

Ed's note: Make sure you read the recent Q&A with the climbers and then send in your own questions for the two.

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