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Rock climbing in the Southeastern USA
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FAQ - About the Flatliners
Who are the Flatliners?
The more appropriate question is who were the Flatliners This website is a remnant of what was once the core of rock climbing activity in Gainesville, Florida. There are still a few Flatliners left in town. Most however, have moved on and are now dispersed across the country, including myself. Southeastclimbing.com evolved from the Flatliners web site, hence the name "Flatliners SoutheastClimbing.com" History of the Flatliners Adventure Club The group was originally called the Flatlanders Adventure Club because we were from flatland Florida. That name only lasted a short while (maybe less than three or four months). Some of us were into skydiving, scuba and cave diving, caving (especially vertical caves). Bill and Les did tower work. Several friends and acquaintances said we were all candidates to become "Flatliners" because all the sports in which we participated had that end as a possibility. We embraced the morbid concept, and took the name to heart along with the infamous "If you die, we split your gear" motto. We used to joke that the most dangerous thing we did was drive the long hours to the mountains. Jim Waldrop, Alan Dougherty and Kevin Brasington came up with
the idea for a club on a climbing trip to Mt
Yonah on Oct 26-28 of 1990. We all learned about climbing together. When someone had a new idea or technique or read about a new practice or skill, we would get together and test it out. We worked out on Brasington's climbing wall, Howard Bishop Middle School band room and at Black Creek Outfitters in Orange Park. We also were allowed to climb at the Episcopal High School Gym in Jax. They had the best indoor wall in the Florida at that time, about 35 feet with about a 12 foot flat ceiling at the very top. We practiced a lot of rope techniques there. We also used to go out to Les Cockram's house off of Millhopper Road and climb and rappel off of his 125' tower. We had a stand off bar at 75' and would rig a rope at the top. It was quite a workout to climb and rappel the tower 10-15 times. We went out there every Tuesday afternoon till dark.
Eventually, Jim Waldrop built a small climbing wall at his house. It would become a hub of climbing activity with weekly gatherings to train, swap stories from the last weeks climb, and plan for the next outing. We progressed from top-roping to multi-pitch lead climbing and expanded our climbs onto the big stone of North Carolina and beyond. Those who had now been climbing for several years progressed into more challenging and difficult routes and started exploring some of the classic climbing areas across the country. Early trips included the Gunks, NY , Joshua Tree, Ca, Seneca Rocks, W.Va., North Conway, N.H., Yosemite, Ca , the City of Rocks, Id., Smith Rock, Or. and more. Group top-roping trips became less frequent as those who once led and arranged them were now seeking bigger challenges. Many of the core climbers moved to other cities across the country, to be closer to climbing. Jim Waldrop, who was once a prime motivator of group trips retired from climbing to pursue whitewater kayaking and other sports. For a few years, Jason Hale, Jeff Braund, Wayne Busch, Henry Gholz, DeDe Gerard, and a few others continued to organize trips for new climbers but as the decade of the 1990's came to a close, interest in rock climbing seemed to be declining. Community college classes were much smaller and fewer graduates went on to participate in climbing trips. Gradually, most of those few Flatliners remaining in Gainesville relocated to other areas and the Flatliners shrunk to but a few remaining local members. Top of pageFlatliners Today 2000 saw the opening of two climbing facilities in town, the Gainesville
Rock Gym and Sun
Country West. Additionally, a local commercial Adventure
Club of Gainesville has formed which arranges occasional
climbing trips. The University
of Florida TRIP program also offers climbing trips. With
all these other avenues to participate in climbing and explore adventures,
new membership in the Flatliners declined sharply at the local level.
In 2002, I canceled the Santa Fe Community College Introduction
to Rock Climbing Classes due to repeated class closures secondary
to insufficient attendance. There are presently no local efforts to recruit new members to the Flatliners Adventure Club. A few of the early members remain in Gainesville, Florida, though we now have members as distant as Alaska, Idaho, Colorado, Massachusetts, Washington DC Many more are scattered throughout the Southeastern states. Activities are largely coordinated through the Internet via e-mail and the Flatliners web site. Several expeditions are organized each year to pursue mountainous adventures which have now spread to an international scope. This year past saw Flatliners climbing in British Columbia, Peru, India, and Italy. Jimmy Franco started the Flatliners web site in 1994. Wayne Busch took over management of it in 1995. It has allowed us to stay in touch, coordinate activities, share experiences, and meet new friends. Over the years members have dispersed across the country, building a network of friends and partners with which we continue to share adventures and the finer experiences of life. The Flatliners web site continues to go on, but now that I am living in North Carolina, it's not possible to continue a Florida based site. Instead, I've decided to expand the old site to cover the southeast in more detail. I've moved to the new Internet address southeastclimbing.com. There is no official membership in the Flatliners Adventure Club.
It has never had a formal structure, existing only in concept. Even
so, there are many who deservedly and respectfully call themselves
members, and have earned such a title by their contributions to
the club, the sport, and the climbing community. There are of course, the founding members:
The early group included:
Many more have followed over the years, with much of that activity chronicled in the Trip Reports section of the website.
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The Name
Bill McClancey,
Les Cockram, Ken Lord, Megan Kelly, Julie Robichaud, Jim Henry,
Mike Smith, Jimmy Franco, Marty Eisenberg and Pam Herring joined
in about this order. We had a few members who were in and out from
then to March of 1991. Karin (Waldrop - wife) joined in October
of 1991, I definitely remember that. We weren't dating then, we
were just friends. We had a few short time members also.
Peak years: The
first tee shirts came out in the summer of 1991. Alan Dougherty
started teaching a community education course for our local community
college, sharing with others his enthusiasm and exhilaration for
the sport. Wayne, and eventually Jackie Busch, came to the
group in March of 1993 following one of these community college
classes. For years, membership in the Flatliners was fed from
these introductory classes. It was taught by a succession of Flatliners,
principally Jim Waldrop and Wayne Busch, for over 10 years. Climbing
trips were arranged to take new graduates for a taste of real rock,
and large group top-roping trips to Tennessee and Alabama were very
common in the mid 1990's. During the fall seasons, someone
was going climbing almost every weekend. Many new members came into
the group through the classes over the following years.
The Transition
Despite having
no designated leader or coordinator, the club has a long history
of organizing local climbing trips, adventures, and expeditions.
These arise spontaneously amongst individuals within the group.
Periodically, someone decides we need new T-shirts, and takes it
upon themselves to organize the printing and distribution of a new
batch. There are typically social gatherings a few times each year.
