SAN MARCOS —— Marcel Meyer is afraid of heights. Whether standing on a ladder or the Empire State Building's roof, Meyer won't look down. The prospect of falling is just too much for his nerves.

Meyer, it turns out, is also a glutton for punishment. The same guy who gets queasy at the thought of looking out a second-floor window is also an avid rock climber.

"I'm really scared of heights," Meyer said. "I don't like to look down for any reason, but I enjoy rock climbing too much to give it up. I'd never let my fear of heights stop me from doing something I love."

Rocking is more than just a passion for Meyer —— it's also his meal ticket. He manages the Solid Rock Gym in San Marcos, which is a warehouse with an enormous, intricate rock-climbing wall where experts come to practice or beginners to learn.

I went to check out the scene recently and expected to find a bunch of rock-climbing aficionados perfecting their craft. What I found was a group of 10-year-old girls.

It was Kourtney Clark's 10th birthday, and she celebrated by inviting her friends to Solid Rock for a few hours of fun. Her mother, Janice Clark, rented the place, allowing Kourtney and her friends to scale the walls, which were around 25 feet high.

"Kourtney had been to a few birthday parties here before and she really enjoyed herself," said Janice Clark, an Escondido resident. "When I asked her what she wanted to do for her birthday, she said she wanted to come here.

"I don't have any problem with it because it's a safe environment and the kids are active, which in my mind is better than taking them to a movie or something like that."

The kids got a quick tutorial on how to sit in the harness and how to anchor someone else with a rope. But it was all fun and games after that, as the children started climbing on almost every inch of wall space.

Climbers are in a harness attached to a rope, which goes through a pulley at the top of the wall and is anchored by someone on the ground.

Climbing actual rocks can be a little more complicated. As Meyer explained, there are four basic types of rock climbing:

• Mountaineering: This also involves hiking and ice climbing.

• Traditional climbing: You have to be a little nuts to try it. You scale the mountain by climbing up a crack in the rock, mostly using only your hands as leverage to pull yourself up. Climbers affix metal stoppers in the crack, which is supposed to stop you if you fall. Besides that, and the rope someone anchors at the base of the rock, you're pretty much on your own. My suggestion: Don't fall.

• Sport climbing: This seems a little less hair-raising because climbers attach clips to supports already bolted into the rock, allowing them to use both hands to climb. Those methods are used to climb great heights, but the complicated part is that ropes used are normally only 200 feet. So a climber must go up 200 feet, then wait for his/her anchor, or belayer, to meet them before continuing.

"I've climbed over 5,000 feet before," Meyer said. "When you climb big stuff like that, you alternate with someone between being a belayer and a climber. It's pretty crazy anchoring someone when your thousands of feet up, but it's also pretty fun."

• Bouldering: The method in which one just climbs small rocks without rope support is gaining popularity these days.

"Bouldering is really popular with the younger generation," Meyer said. "It's much easier to find rocks, and it obviously takes much less time to do."

Scott Erler, who also works at Solid Rock, is really into bouldering. The 19-year old Valley Center resident has been climbing for four years and has been successful at climbing competitions.

"It's much less of an investment," Erler said. "You can just go out and find rocks without having to go up an entire mountain. … My parents got me into rock climbing, and I didn't really like it at first, but now I'm really in to it."

Kourtney Clark and her friends were into scaling the walls at Solid Rock, and frankly, I can see how the addiction starts.

The term "action sports" is normally associated with skateboarding, surfing, snowboarding and the like, but I would like to add rock climbing to the list. Rock climbers do some things I'm sure skaters would never try, like scaling a vertical wall that's thousands of feet high.

That's crazy stuff, especially if you're scared of heights.

Hot spots

Here are a few local places to rock climb:

Beirut, Vista/Oceanside

Carlsbad Boulders, Carlsbad

Corte Madera, San Diego

Culp Valley, Borrego

Dixon Lake, Escondido

Magnolia Boulders, Santee

Mission Gorge, San Diego

Mt. Everest, Poway

Mt. Woodson, Poway

Otay Lakes, San Diego

People's wall, La Jolla

Poway Crags, Poway

Rock Mountain, Fallbrook

Source: rockclimbing.com

LEARNING HOW TO CLIMB

The Solid Rock Gym teaches rock-climbing lessons. It is $38 for a private lesson and $28 per person for a one-hour group lesson. Go to www.solidrockgym.com for more details.

KASS WINS U.S. OPEN

Danny Kass won the men's halfpipe competition at the U.S. Open of Snowboarding, which was held last weekend in Stratton, Vt. Gretchen Bleiler won the women's halfpipe. Carlsbad's Shaun White suffered a back injury during the rail jam on the first day of competition.

LOCAL EVENTS

• April 2-3: Ezekiel/Sun Diego Pro-Am Surf Series Event #6, Pacific Beach

• April 9-11: ISF High School State Championships, Oceanside Harbor (Note: this is a revised date from the original schedule)

ON THE TUBE

• Sunday: Winter Gravity Games, 6:30-8:30 p.m., OLN

• Monday-Wednesday: Winter Gravity Games, 6-8 p.m., OLN

• Thursday: Rip Curl Surfing Search, Part 1 and 2, 3 p.m., FSN

The Action Sports column runs every other Saturday. Contact Scott Bair at (760) 739-6642 or sbair@nctimes.com.