Head torch at five and back down after dark, which is what it takes to reserve a fourteen hour Taygetos ridge day in the Mani

Five in the morning to seven at night

You start in the dark from the refuge track, and the first three hours are walked by head torch through fir forest that you smell long before you can see it. Light arrives somewhere near the tree line and the ground changes with it: forest to scree to bare limestone. The last stretch up to the chapel at the top is the slowest rather than the steepest, because at that height nobody moves quickly. You eat up there, you do not linger, and then you spend as long coming down as you did going up. Back at the vehicle around seven. The one fixed rule is the turnaround time, and the guide sets it before you leave rather than argue about it at two thousand metres.

Whether your legs can hold this

This is the hardest day on the site and it is not for people who walk occasionally. Fourteen hours moving, about seventeen hundred metres of ascent and every one of them back down again, on ground that is loose limestone for the top third. You need boots already broken in, poles, three litres of water, and enough recent hill days behind you that the numbers do not surprise you. Descent is what hurts. Knees, not lungs, are what usually end this day early. The guide will ask plainly what you have walked in the past year and will decline the booking if the answer does not add up, which is better than turning back at midday.

Costs, and who bills you

From $198 per person, with a minimum charge for the party because the day is private: two walkers pay more each than five do, and the exact figure comes back in writing before anything is held. It covers the guide for the full fourteen hours, the drive to the track head and back, and a spare shell and torch carried in the pack in case yours fails. It does not cover food, beds, or insurance of any kind: this office sells none and arranges none. Nothing is paid here and no card details are taken here. The mountain guide invoices you directly, in his own name, and settles with this office after the day has run.

Awkward things people ask about this day

Can you put us on a date with other walkers to lower the figure?

No. The day is private only, and that is the guide's condition rather than ours. A party of mixed pace on a fourteen hour ridge means somebody is being dragged and somebody is being held back, and at that height both are a problem. If cost is what stops you, the sensible move is to bring your own party up to four or five, which drops the figure per person a long way.

What happens if the weather turns?

The day is cancelled or shortened and no one apologises for it. Above the tree line there is nothing to shelter behind, and the ridge holds snow into May and takes lightning on late summer afternoons. If the guide calls it off before you start, you owe nothing. If he turns the party round at the tree line, the day is over and it still counts as the day; we say this now so it is not a surprise on the mountain.

Is there a shorter version of this?

There is, and we will book it: same start, same forest, and a turnaround at the spring below the scree, which is about seven hours instead of fourteen. It is a different day at a lower figure and we would rather sell you that than have you fail high up. Say so when you write and we will quote it. It runs on the same private basis, with the same guide.