Travel letter

Hello! Welcome to the next master-level scout! So they have assigned you too to the station on the basin floor, always foggy or dusty. I could hardly wait to go home! You can start counting sols now—but you will be busy, because I have prepared an itinerary for exploring the next region. I enclose an atlas for your journey. Look for sheet 2B. Follow this travel letter: perhaps you will find something interesting—a spore, an alien bone or a buried interstellar wreck. I found only rocks, but I have not yet explored this route. That hope may sweeten your solitude. Your journey begins at the dusty base on the eastern rim of Hellas, the largest and oldest basin on Mars, at 79°E, 35°S. Following your predecessor’s map, head out of the basin and uphill until you reach a valley: the channel of Navua Valles extending deepest into the basin. Follow it to a delta, then continue until you find the channel again. Eventually leave it for rougher ground. A small but tall mountain rises six kilometres above the surface in the distance. Head towards it and fill in its name: ___ Mons. Continue east, where the landscape changes to old lava flows. Cross two winding channels towards the volcano ___ Mons. It is large but not very high. Climb to its summit and find a broad, steep-walled caldera. Rather than risk descending into it, follow the northern ridge around the volcano. Then descend its southern slope through a broad valley, passing a crater that seems filled with ice. Unexpectedly you reach the upper edge of a steep cliff. Below is a broad canyon filled with a yielding, dusty material—perhaps ice? Follow the northern rim until another canyon joins it: ___ Vallis. Cross several tributary valleys as you go downhill. Eventually leave the volcanic area. After a large bend, reach the end of the slope into Hellas, though the channel continues across the basin floor. Keep going until it becomes unrecognisable and merges into the floor’s sediments. You arrive after 3,500 kilometres. Give your sketch map to your successor! Draw your route, the landforms you passed and their names, using this description and map sheet 2B.