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A Thanksgiving Trip to Bentonville

Of few of us at Guthrie's had heard the city of Bentonville, Arkansas has been taking its claim to fame as “The Mountain Biking Capital of the World” seriously. Naturally, my colleague Andrew and I had to go see what all the buzz was about over Thanksgiving week. After some last minute planning and a mundane 18 hour drive through the great plains, we were ready to ride. On paper no one would assume Bentonville’s geography to possess solid mountain biking trails. I’ll admit having seen a few random videos and trail reviews I was having a hard time picturing what it would actually look like in person. 

The first section of trails we hit was in the “Coler Preserve”, which is a reserved section of land purely dedicated to mountain biking and trail development. Once we started pushing the pedals up we immediately noticed that the trails were in fantastic shape. From the top of the trail you’ll notice that there are five downhill runs available, each containing a variety of jumps, berms, and technical sections with plenty of rocks and roots to suit anyone’s riding style. We started off with “Fire Line” as a warm-up, then moved to “Cease and Desist”, “Rock Solid”, and finally “Rock Soft”. Moving towards downtown you can easily get your morning coffee (and/or bloody mary) then casually ride just minutes on a bike path to connect to all three sections of the “Slaughter Pen Trails”. Stemming from each section are endless flowing trails that you can spend hours repeatedly riding. We spent most of the day on them racking up over 20 miles with just under 2,000 vertical feet. Among our favorites were “The Boneyard”, “Ozone”, “Schrone”, and “Blackbird”. 

Bentonville bike

Bentonville has some classic forest riding, featuring Tyler's bike

One general demeanor we picked up on was how relaxed and positive the mountain bike community attitude was in Bentonville. Everyone we interacted with was genuinely excited just to be outside on a bike having fun. Additionally, there were no irrational grumpy attitudes towards E-Bikes when a rider showed up on one, and no one was upset if a family inadvertently clogged up the trail for a minute on their way to the top. I was impressed with how well-constructed everything was, telling of the quality of trail maintenance being done to keep this system running flawlessly. While riding we happened to run into a local trail crew and asked how much effort was put into these trails. Let me just say, it's a hell of a lot more than we do back home in Utah (Deer Valley *cough cough*). These guys work every day of the week fine tuning berms, cleaning jump lips, and assembling new features. It certainly does help that there are seemingly endless funds available from “Corporate America” that need more and more tax write-offs. Regardless, these funds are welcomed into the cycling community with open arms.  

Before heading back to Utah we dropped into a few of the local bike shops to see how they were doing. We stopped at Mojo Cycling and Phat Tire Bike Shop. We were impressed with how helpful the employees were and the solid selection of products. In the end Bentonville, Arkansas had plenty to offer for all types of riders. That being said, I think my 170mm Trek Slash was far too much travel for these trails, but it was still an awesome time. If I have the chance again, I’ll be sure to go back to test my skills.   

- Tyler Callister