Jeff and Priti Wright’s climbing resumé ranges from K6 Central in the Karakoram to a traverse of Torre Egger in Patagonia. Yet they both work full-time as engineers. How do they manage it?
They have a system worked out. Every four years, they take a sabbatical to focus on mountaineering. Here’s how they managed to live a life of adventure while making a living.
The call of climbing
Jeff and Priti met at college in Florida. They didn’t really start climbing until they moved to Seattle in 2012 and took mountaineering classes together. But both always had a love for adventure.
“When I was a teenager, my parents took me to India several times as practicing Hare Krishnas,” Priti recalls. “On one trip to Mayapur, we visited a Jagannath temple, which is famous for being especially merciful in granting wishes of devotees. In this small, open-air place of worship, I lit some incense and offered flowers in the sweltering, subcontinental heat before these wood-carved, painted deities and prayed for an adventurous life. Sometimes, God grants you more than you could have ever imagined!”
Priti Wright. Photo: Jeff Wright
Pacific NW background
During their early climbing years, the couple learned about alpine climbing on weekends in the Cascade Mountains of the Pacific Northwest. Jeff worked for Boeing and Priti for Amazon. The climbing options were endless; Mt. Rainier was just 100km away. But the Wrights’ main memory of that time is how the local climbing community shared their knowledge and skills with them.
“Alpine climbing is such a multi-faceted sport, requiring a large array of skills and training, that it can be difficult or dangerous to get into it on your own,” Jeff explained.
Their mentors included Colin Haley, Wayne Wallace, and many others from the Pacific Northwest. Soon, the Wrights went from pupils to teachers and began to look for higher, more ambitious, and distant climbing goals. An accident also prompted them to reconsider their priorities.
Jeff Wright in Riglos, Spain. Photo: Priti Wright
“In 2017, Priti had a full ACL tear while skiing in Jackson Hole,” Jeff said. “[It] gave us some much-needed downtime to think about long-term goals, make a budget, and live more frugally.
The couple turned out to be great at planning. After five months of ACL rehab, they used their brief 10-day vacation time to go to Alaska and storm up Denali’s Cassin Ridge.
It wasn’t enough. The idea of a sabbatical year started taking shape in their minds. In 2020, they took their first.
How to do it
“Jeff and I had always daydreamed about taking an extended break to travel the world, but we hadn’t made an actual plan or saved up anything to make it a reality,” Priti said. “Leaving jobs for an extended period can be scary. But we’re both engineers [software and aerospace], so we were confident that we could get jobs again at the end of the sabbatical.
Jeff even arranged a formal sabbatical through his boss so he could return to the same job. “It’s worth bringing this up with your employer before you just quit!” says Priti.
Jeff and Priti Wright in Spain’s La Pedriza, on a boulder known as ‘the Piglet.’ Photo: Antonio Fernandez
“We had been on a hamster wheel of weekend warrior adventures and career pursuits,” Jeff explained. “A Ted Talk from Stefan Sagmeister gave us the first inspiration for periodical leaves of absence. We love our jobs and are not really inspired to retire early. The idea is simple: Live below your means for several years, save, then travel cheaply during a gap year.”
“You don’t have to be tech workers like us to make this happen,” Jeff added. “On our travels around the world, we’ve met people from all walks of life, making their climbing/backpacking dreams come true. They stay in climber hostels in low-cost parts of the world like Southeast Asia.”
COVID experiences
In 2020, they took their first sabbatical.
“We already had experience climbing in Patagonia, and we climbed the Innominata Ridge on Mont Blanc, so on this trip, we aimed our sights higher,” Priti explained. “We started in Patagonia for two months, where we succeeded in our dream of climbing the Ragni route on Cerro Torre, which we had previously attempted on a short trip in 2016. The next six months we spent in the Alps, mainly around Chamonix.”
Inspired by the books of Gaston Rebuffat and Tom Ballard’s winter solo climbs, they set out to climb the six great North Faces of the Alps. They didn’t expect the COVID pandemic, but the virus didn’t stop them. Priti describes the experience:
We flew to Europe, and since the weather and conditions were good, we headed straight for the Eiger North Face. As we arrived, rumblings of COVID began, but the trains, lifts, and ski resorts claimed that they would stay open. But the night before our climb, they officially announced a closure of the Jungfraujoch that would take us to the base of the climb.
We had to ski up to the base with our packs to start the climb. After a couple days, we successfully summited our first North Face, still technically in winter, via the 1938 Heckmair Route, which was in perfect condition.
The day we came down, France’s President Macron ordered confinement to begin, so we returned to our flat in Chamonix and spent eight weeks in strict lockdown. Eight weeks of beautiful weather passed by, as Mont Blanc taunted us from our bedroom window.
Left to right, Ali Saltoro with Priti and Jeff Wright in the Skardu airport, 2023. Photo: Alpine Adventure Guides
From the Alps to the Karakoram
“When confinement ended, the mountain trains had still not restarted, but we raced up the Petit-Leininger route on the Petit Dru,” Priti recalled. “The rest of the six North Faces went down easily. We were super lucky to catch each one in perfect condition. Since we were on sabbatical, we had the flexibility to wait for routes to be just right.”
The pair climbed the Matterhorn’s Schmid Route, the Walker Spur on the Grandes Jorasses, the Comici-Dimai Route on Tre Cima Grande di Lavaredo, and the Cassin route on Piz Badile.
The scarcity of travelers also made it easier to get their visas and permits for Pakistan at the end of summer. In October 2020, they made the first ascent of K6 Central (7,155m).
The couple also kept detailed reports of their ascents on their Alpine Vagabonds blog, a format they still prefer compared to social media.
“It is much more searchable and persistent than social media sites like Facebook and Instagram,” Priti explained. “It lends itself to how-to’s and trip reports very well.”
K7 Central and Cerro Torre
Finally, the Wrights returned to work, but by then, the travel bug had bitten them hard.
“We spoke with our managers and arranged to take some unpaid leave for an. expedition in 2022 to attempt another central peak in the Karakoram, K7 Central,” Priti recalls. “We also used our three-week vacations for a smash-and-grab trip to Patagonia in 2023, where we made a partial traverse of the Torre Range from Cerro Standhardt to Torre Egger. Jeff helped me become the first female to summit all four Torre peaks.”
That year, Priti Wright climbed Alaska’s Mt. Huntington with Anna Pfaff, but the climb had a dramatic turn: Pfaff frostbit six toes and needed several of them amputated.
“This experience has made me think a lot about the other costs of alpine expeditions and risk-taking in the mountains,” Priti admitted.
2024 devoted to sport climbing
In 2024, their next sabbatical rolled around. This time, the goal was to sport climb in Europe and Southeast Asia. Their social media posts made many in the worldwide climbing community green with envy.
“Historically, we have focused on alpine and trad climbing so much that our pure sport rock climbing skills have not kept up,” they explained. “The goal was set at 5.13a (7c+). Before this trip, we had both climbed a handful of 5.12a (7a+) routes.”
They hired a dedicated climbing coach, Ian Cooper, and climbed every day.
Priti Wright in Finale Ligure, Italy. Photo: Jeff Wright
Jeff sent his first 5.13a in Siurana last month, and Priti sent a 5.12d. At the time of this interview, she was still working toward that 5.13a. The couple moved comfortably in the 7th European grade, and they had a great time everywhere they went. They also reflected on how different sport climbing is from alpinism.
Success in sport climbing feels more ethereal than alpine climbing, which has distinct achievements and (for us) a more prolonged satisfaction. Both still require a lot of dedication and planning. We have focused on specific rock techniques, learned to incorporate hangboard/edge/Tindeq training, and projecting tactics.
We’ve learned how to climb on a variety of rock types (limestone, granite, sandstone, tufas, vertical crimps, overhanging jugs, pockets, etc) and introduced finger care tools and kneepads.
We also read the mental and physical training books from Dave McCleod, Don McGrath, Arno Ilgner, Eric Horst, Steve Bechtel and others, while also joining an online course through Altitude.
In the end, the biggest lesson we’ve learned is to think of climbing progression less as specific goals and milestones than as a continuous, non-linear journey of playful exploration.
A world of rock
One of the biggest questions during their 2024 sabbatical was how to design an itinerary and pick one particular crag over another.
“We wanted to minimize travel and hit some of the most iconic crags, narrowing it down to just places in Europe and Southeast Asia (Kalymnos, Leonidio, Finale Ligure, Céüse, Frankenjura, Arco, Sicily, Sardinia, Siurana, El Chorro, Chulilla, Tonsai, and Thakek),” they said.
“In Europe, we mainly traveled by car and aimed to stay in each crag at least three weeks at a time, using our one-year European tourist Visa.”
So, what’s next?
The climbers are now enjoying their last days of fun in Thailand but will be back home in the U.S. in March.
“We feel ready and re-energized to get back in the workforce this spring, with the goal of trying out the digital nomad lifestyle,” says Priti.
They are also planning new alpine expeditions for 2026. “The objective was always to take our new rock climbing skills and apply them to the mountains,” they said.
And they are thinking about their next sabbatical.
“Future sabbaticals might focus on other climbing skills such as hard technical ice, crack climbing, or even bouldering. That’s our biggest weakness.”
Writer Angela Benavides with the Wrights at La Pedriza climbing area. Photo: Antonio Fernandez
