Example of a cliffhanger EMRI orbit in the (1 − e, a) plane. The cliffhanger region is filled with a purple grid, and it is delimited by the purple dashed line and the orange solid curve (see Fig. 1 for the meaning of the other elements). The sharp tightening of the orbit at the passage inside the cliffhanger region occurs during a single pericentre passage. Here we set M_• = 10⁵ M_⊙.