no it isn't, just because it leaves the atmosphere of the planet doesn't make it impossible to climb.

Just...very difficult XD. I wonder what the gravitational strength would be at the atmospheric lip of mars. Could you imagine climbing a mountain in essentially a zero G environment? Oh man... Now I have to go do some math...preceded by a little research. I'm curious now, and that probably makes me a pretty big nerd. -The joys of being an Engineeing physicist, I don't have to wonder about the gravitational strength because I can calculate it XD

sounds like fun, if only i had a better understanding of the various maths. :/

Okay I'm back! Found out some really cool things. Enjoy! While standing about 22 kilometers above the Martian datum (the equivalent of "sea level" on Mars), the atmosphere of Mars is still fairly well intact as this height. The gravity however, still yielded some interesting changes. Atop Olympus Mons, I (a human male of 180cm [6ft] height and approx 82kg [180.5 lbs] mass) would experience an acceleration due to gravity of ~0.118[m/s^2]. At the martian datum (the proverbial foot of the mountain), the acceleration due to gravity is ~3.711m/s^2. So the effect of gravity on me at the top of the mountain would be ~31.6 times weaker than at the bottom! (& ~82.9 times weaker than the effect of gravity that we feel every day here on Earth's surface at sea level!) On another note, the surface of the shield volcano itself is very shallow, with an average slope of only 5 degrees. So when you think about not being able to climb it because of it's height... you'd be crazy wrong. As it happens, you could probably walk most of it without any equipment (with the exception of life support equipment naturally). Don't let that fool you into thinking you could just saunter up there and enjoy the view though, because the horizon on Mars due to its curvature is only about 3 kilometers [under 2 miles]! In the end, your view from the top of the second largest mountain known in our solar system would just look like a vast plain of black-brown rock gently sloping down in every direction as far as they eye could see. Then you walk downhill for days (literally) and it just seems to go on and on, except now the rocks are closer to a rusty red-brown with only a little bit of black instead of the brown-black from before. But up there... you could jump crazy high! Think about 10x the height of a moon bounce (I mean literally jumping on the moon, not the bouncy castle things). To put that in perspective, I can jump on average a little over 30cm into the air (1 foot) here in my apartment. On the surface of the moon [at datum], I could jump 2 full meters straight up [~6.66 feet]! With that in mind, on mars at datum you couldn't get quite so high as you could on the moon, but at the top of Mount Olympus? (Olympus Mons = Mount Olympus in Latin) You could pull of jumps rivaled only by friggin' Superman as you leap 20+ meters (almost 70 ft) into the air and gliding gracefully back to the ground! So you could literally jump over a house (2 storey townhouse kind of deal), and clear it easy. In fact, I could probably clear 2 of them stacked on top of each other. That ability would make it worth the climb for me even if the view doesn't! [If anyone cares to see the equations used, calculations themselves, or where I pulled each of my constants from, just ask and I'll be happy to put it up for you.]

Awesome! Very informative! I look forward to when I expand my knowledge of mathematics enough to do this on my own. I'm a freshman in high school so my knowledge is still very limited.

I was a junior (in Canada) when I took on the project of determining the strength of our black hole (the one that holds our entire galaxy together) on our entire solar system. High school physics is remarkably useful for gravitation and kinematic (physical motion and interaction) stuff! With a little research and the following equation, you can find the effects of almost anything on anything else! Newton's universal law of gravitation: F = [G(m1)(m2)]/r^2 Where; F= the force (in Newtons) of one object on another object. G= 6.67384x10^-11 (its just a constant that relates masses to gravitational force.. Trust it and you'll be fine.) m1= The mass (in kilograms) of one of the things your finding the force between. m2= The mass (in kilograms) of the other thing your finding the force between. r= the distance (in METERS) between the CENTERs of the two objects. (r^2)= r to the power of two. [in case you weren't familiar with the notation]. Note: Meters are really important to use here because G uses meters to get its constant number, so if you don't use meters, then you end up multiplying two completely different scales of distances and everything will be wrong. If you REALLY don't want to use meters, then you have to recalculate G using the distance measurement of your choice... which would suck. So have fun!