Priscilla was born and raised in Dallas, Texas, never even seeing the Rocky Mountains until she was a young adult. She enjoyed playing tennis and riding her horses - participating in rodeos/barrel racing. After high school, Priscilla attended the University of North Texas where she earned a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and began working in newspaper advertising. After marrying her husband, Todd, they moved to Florida and later Georgia following Todd’s aviation career. In her 40’s, she returned to college to pursue a career in Nursing and worked for eleven years as a critical care nurse. Eventually moving back to Texas, and now raising two children, a family trip to Colorado led Priscilla to find a new love in hiking and climbing 14ers. It would only be two years from that first hiking trip that Priscilla would leave her home state of Texas to live at the foot of Pikes Peak in 2012. The Waldo Canyon Fire greeted the Clayton’s as they arrived in Colorado Springs. The fire and subsequent flooding in Ute Pass created an interest in flood and fire mitigation and she began volunteering for tree planting and other trail projects. She has volunteered with Friends of the Peak, Incline Friends, Coalition of the Upper South Platte, Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado, and Green Mountain Falls Trail system. Priscilla also took notice of the wonderful trails on the 14ers and became involved with Colorado Fourteener’s Initiative, a non-profit dedicated to preserving our peaks by creating and maintaining sustainable trails. She has done many trail projects with CFI, volunteered as a Peak Steward, and currently serves on the Board of Directors. Now retired from nursing, Priscilla has climbed 35 individual 14ers, with well over 60 summits when including repeat climbs. But she doesn’t limit her hiking and climbing to the Centennial State. Spanning six years, she backpacked the 211-mile John Muir Trail in the Sierra Nevada range, hiking one section each summer. She has climbed Half Dome, twice been on the summit of Mt. Whitney, 14,508’, and the summit of Rucu Pichincha in Ecuador, 15,413’.
|