Doesn’t Look All That Intimidating

Came across this while doing some story research: Olympus Mons, complete with escarpment and aureole

Nothing to it, really…

 

 

It’s one picture of hundreds of its kind, cited as evidence of how impassible the escarpment around Olympus Mons is to surface-traveling explorers.

Yet…

Look at the left side in this picture (west-northwest on Olympus Mons). No escarpment. No impassible five-mile-high cliffs. Just a long slope. Kinda like the ones on the south side of the volcano.

I bet you could drive a rover up those slopes…