The mightiest floodway on Mars, cut by cataclysmic torrents of water.
Kasei Valles is the single largest outflow channel system on Mars, stretching some 2,000–3,000 km from the Tharsis region down into Chryse Planitia. It was scoured by catastrophic floods releasing volumes of water far beyond any river on Earth.
Claim your plot here →Kasei Valles began near Echus Chasma on the flank of Tharsis and tore northeast, then east, before emptying into the Chryse basin. Its floods were catastrophic outbursts, likely triggered when volcanic heat melted vast stores of underground ice, unleashing torrents that carved streamlined islands and left the channel floor grooved by rushing water.
In places the system splits into two enormous branches around high plateaus, sculpting teardrop-shaped islands hundreds of kilometers long. The scale of erosion implies discharges thousands of times greater than the Amazon River, making Kasei a monument to the wet, violent chapters of early Martian history in the Hesperian period.
Its peak floods likely dwarfed any flood in Earth's history, moving water thousands of times faster than the Amazon.
Not a rift like Valles Marineris — Kasei is a flood-carved channel, but nearly as long.