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Skiing Olympus MonsWeek of August 25, 1997
Number two hasn't changed much since then, but hopefully the first point has. Olympus Mons is the largest volcano in the solar system, and is located on a large elevated plain on Mars, called the Tharsis shield. Olympus Mons has been extinct for something like a billion years, but when it was active it must have been quite a sight. Unlike the Earth, evidently Mars was not tectonically active, and geologic hot spots tend to sit still in one place. This means volcanos can grow to enormous size. Also, Mars' lower gravity means mountains can be higher there without collapsing under their own weight.
So why can't you ski it? If you combine that height with that size, you get an average slope of only about 5 degrees. That's not much of a slope, and the weak Martian gravity would make it hard to get moving. I doubt the resort cities in Colorado have to worry about losing trade just yet anyway.
Want to know more about Mars? Bill Arnett's The Nine Planets is loaded with info. You can skip right to the Mars pages too. My thanks to Bill Arnett for pointing out that my original calculation of the slope of Olympus Mons was off by a factor of two, which I have since corrected.
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