Rock Climbing Party - Mountain Climb Cake

Our son's birthday is at the end of February, so we are always looking for nice indoor options.  This year we held his party at a local rock climbing facility.  The facility is all indoor (big plus with our unpredictable Georgia winter weather).  We used the invites we downloaded from the rock climbing facility's website. 

The cake was tricky for me because I could not find any good examples of a rockclimbing cake!  I always make the cake myself, so this is what I did. I baked six round yellow cakes in 9 inch diameters.  Then I shaved them off into six concentric circles and stacked them up to look like a mountain.  I used chocolate icing (the kind with chocolate chips in it to look more rocky") to frost the cake all over.  Then I added some green frosting to look like vegetation. 

Next I got some plastic trees from the cake supply store and added those on top of the "mountain".  I also purchased some edible cake decorations which looked like rocks to add all over the mountain and around the base of the "mountain" cake.  I used a red licorice rope and fondant to make a person rapelling off the top of the mountain.  We had 26 climbers attend the party. 

They climbed and climbed in the main area (had 5 belayers there to break them into smaller groups and give them plenty of climbing time) and then climbed in the indoor "cave" climbing area.  They had a blast and got in lots of good exercise before they ate their cake and icecream! 

For goody bags printed off the clip art of a climbing person(same one I used in the invitations) and stuffed them with the following: a rock candy on a stick a bag of pop rocks a glow stick bracelet a small thing of bubbles on a string and a "make your own pet rock kit". 

In the pet rock kit I added the following:  a big polished rock (purchased at Michaels) a felt tip pen a glue stick google eyes yarn (for hair) a red pipe cleaner (for mouth) two cotton balls (for shoes) a plastic lace (leash).  I was very pleased with the way it all turned out and the kids had a wonderful and different experience :)  "