VAIL, CO — At a young age Trinity Noll learned to rock climb, sail, swim, ski, snowboard, and ride horses around Oxford Hills, to name a few of her sports of choice. She has followed her love for outdoor adventure to compete in whitewater stand up paddleboarding in Colorado.

Former western Maine resident Trinity Noll competes in whitewater stand up paddleboarding in Colorado. Noll lived in Norway as a child and graduated from Telstar High School in Bethel. Supplied photo

“My mother was a runner and biker,” Noll said. “My parents were both very outdoorsy people. It was just part of growing up in Maine. We didn’t have a television. I was always more interested in being outside than inside.”

Noll got her first taste of water sports learning to swim and sail on Lake Pennesseewassee. During her childhood her family lived on Pleasant Street. Ordway Grove and the park across the lake were her stomping grounds.

“I remember my mom teaching me how to swim there,” she said. “There was a giant beach with the docks. It was so much fun as a kid there – the swing sets and teeter totters, the jungle gyms and playing tether ball.

“We would just walk through the woods and go swim in the lake behind Ordway. We had a 21-foot sailboat called Songbird that was great to sail on. Those are some of my favorite memories.”

When the Nolls lived in Norway her father Rob was employed at a woodworking company in Oxford and her mother taught for the Maine Adaptive Ski Program at Sunday River. From there the family moved to Naples and down east to Mount Desert Isle before settling in Bethel, where in 1993 she graduated from Telstar High School.

Trinity Noll, formerly of Norway and Bethel, was raised on the shores and waters of western Maine. At the age of 48, Noll is competing in whitewater stand up paddleboarding against the sport’s top athletes. Supplied photo

“Growing up in Maine gave me my love of the outdoors,” Noll said of her formative years.

While at Telstar Noll joined an outdoor student leadership challenge at Telstar High School, competed in track and took to snowboarding, then still an emerging sport.

“When I went to Telstar we started a snowboarding club, Mission Snowboards,” she recalled. “We had a little snowboarding magazine we put out at school. As we all got involved with learning it, my dad got really enthralled and began making custom snowboards.”

After graduation Noll found herself swapping western Maine for the western U.S., where she attended Adam State College in Alamosa, Colorado. She has been there ever since, working as an art dealer and getting outside every season.

“I skied 108 days last winter,” she said. Living on Gore Creek, which eventually feeds into the Colorado River, she also avidly participates in whitewater sports. When she started with standup paddleboarding, it was pretty much from her back yard.

“Trinity is known to be on the water as soon as the water begins to flow from the spring melt,” said her father, Rob Noll. “She’ll paddleboard in snowstorms.”

Last month Noll placed second in the GoPro Games downriver SUP competition, which she has competed in for the last eight years.

“I beat the national champion of Canada,” she said. “Competing at an international level at the age of 48, it’s exciting to be in the beginning part of a sport. Especially on rivers, it’s an unusual sport to do on rivers.

“SUP hasn’t yet hit the mainstream yet where everyone is doing it, it’s still sort of obscure. When I was doing white water canoeing I got up to class three, but doing SUP I’ve gone up to class four.”

The sport dates back 15-20 years when well-known extreme sports athlete Charlie MacArthur began taking paddleboards down Colorado area rivers. MacArthur pioneered techniques and gear, enough people that it developed into a competitive sport.

The technique for stand up stand up paddleboarding on rivers is quite different from canoeing, according to Noll. With two people in the canoe, the person in front is responsible for calling out rocks ahead and the second steers to their direction. Noll said that on a paddleboard she has a much better vision of what’s coming for rapids.

“You’re standing so you can look down the river a lot farther, and you put together moves through a very long rapid,” she said. “And falling from a canoe, getting back in is really really tricky. In comparison, getting back up on your paddleboard is extremely easy.

“And in a rapid, you can lower your center of gravity by going to your knees or even sitting. You have smoother maneuverability on a paddleboard than in a raft, although you can go over a lot of things in a raft that you can’t with a paddleboard.

Noll has developed as a whitewater stand up paddleboarder well enough to be sponsored by Hala Sports, an outdoor gear outfitter.

“I am not a master of any sport that I have done,” she said. “With paddleboarding, I have achieved a very high level in a pretty short amount of time.”