Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on June 27, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

I have cropped it to focus on this one hill, about 900 feet high (though the elevation data from MRO is somewhat uncertain at this resolution), because of that major landslide on its northern slopes. At some point in the past a major piece of the exposed bedrock at the top broke off and slide about halfway down the mountain, almost as a unit, settling on the alluvial fill that comprises the bottom half of the hill’s flanks.

The bedrock surrounding the peak is also of interest because of its gullies, all of which were created by downward flowing material. Was it ice? Water? Sand? Or maybe a combination of two or three? If water or ice was involved it was a very long time ago, as this location is in the dry equatorial regions of Mars. There is little known near-surface ice here.

The red dots on the overview map to the right mark this location, inside the section of Valles Marineris dubbed Eos Chasma. At this point the canyon is wide, about 250 miles across. Its floor is also very complex, with both channels and endless small hills — hence my allusion to West Virginia in the headline. As on Earth, when Mars is well colonized and has its own political conflicts, this region would be backwoods country, difficult to navigate and easy to hide in.

If you look at the original image you will see that these hills are surrounded by a mixture of sand, dust, and debris that all seem to be flowing to the east, either from the theorized catastrophic floods that some scientists believe caused Valles Marineris, or from the prevailing winds, or from both.

There is a lot of dust in the hollows between these hills, though its depth is unclear. It certainly appears to pile up sufficiently to appear to almost bury some of the smaller hills.