"I’m Noah Ridge I’m 15, I live in Minneapolis, MN and I’ve been climbing for about 5 years. I climb at vertical endeavors in St. Paul and travel around the country to compete. I’m also a proud member of the VE mountain goats and currently a member of youth team USA.

Recently I at was at an awesome competition at my local gym called passion for flash’in. The comp started at 9am and then there was a 4 hour red point qualifying round, and then an isolation lead final. For the qualifying found they had set boulder problems and top ropes and a few lead routes.  The whole gym was packed, and the lines were huge, sometimes you had to wait half an hour but otherwise it was a fun comp.

After the qualifying round they had a lead and top rope final for the advanced and open categories, they had lead for open and top rope for advanced. I went up to isolation and listened to people cheering for probably 2 hours, since I was climbing dead last. I got to listen as people cheered when two competitors flashed the women’s open finals route. Then after the person before me went out in a blue horned animal costume I got to climb.

Continuing with my overly full schedule the next weekend I traveled to Rochester with the VE Mountain Goats to compete in the Best of the Midwest bouldering comp, at Prairie Walls climbing gym. Best of the Midwest is a fundraiser competition for the Minnesota climbers association.  This was one of the most exhausting comps I’ve ever been to as I tried problems over and over for 4 hours, but one of the most fun as prairie walls is one of the best bouldering gyms in the Midwest with multiple 15 to 16 foot top out boulders.

Congrats to Ruth Grenke for flashing her finals route and taking second in women’s open and Sammy Sumpter for placing first in women’s intermediate and the rest of Team VE who did awesome

PS: I placed first in men’s open at Passion for Flashin' and third in men’s open at Best of the Midwest."