Bentonville’s Biking Bliss: A Mountain Biker’s Haven

Bentonville, Arkansas’ claim to fame is the ‘mountain bike capital of the world.’ If you have ever visited Bentonville before for a trip, you understand. For all you first time visitors to Bentonville, you are in for a wonderful treat. Bentonville offers a wide variety of trails for beginners to downhill junkies. Whether you have a few days to visit these wonderful trails or a whole week, you will find something for everyone in your group.

Bentonville offers 50+ trails covering over a 140 miles, you will find a number of enjoyable trails for your group to ride on. Below are a number of areas/trails that I have personally ridden over the last few years and that I have really enjoyed.

Cross-Country Trails

Slaughter Pen- Slaughter Pen offers a wide variety of trails ranging from green to blue levels of difficulty. You can spend a whole day riding around these trails and exploring them, mostly off of the spine trail (All American).

Some of my favorite trails are:

• All American (green trail- easy flow trail to get to other trail locations)
• Choo Choo (green trail- climb up and ride a paved trail downhill)
• Jesse’s Last Stand (blue trail-nice flow downhill with big bridges you can ride up and over)
• Back 40 – (a mixed loop with varying terrain) is a longer loop if you are looking for an adventure day on a bike. Be sure to pack snacks and extra water as it is about 23 miles long.

Handcut Hollow-handcut offers best of both worlds of cross-country and gravity paired together. As the name suggests, handcut was all hand built versus the machine built trails. The traverse loop is about 7.5 miles and is considered a blue trail. The trails are beautiful and there are a number of tight switchbacks.

In the middle of handcut hollow you will find the downhill hub that has seven downhill routes you can enjoy:

• Mother Necessity (green trail & climb up to hub)
• My Hero Zero (blue trail)
• The Body Machine (blue trail)
• Interplanet Janet (blue trail)- my absolute FAVORITE.
• Ready Or Not (blue trail)
• School House Rock (black trail)
• No More Kings (black trail)

The climb up is a little bit longer but isn’t too bad. Depending on how many runs you decide to do, you can spend at least a half day here enjoying the cross country trails and

Gravity Trails

Coler Mountain Bike Preserve-Coler offers a huge variety of downhill trails that are an absolute blast to shred down. The climb back up isn’t too bad as it easily weaves back and forth up to the top rathe quickly. The main part of Coler is called the “Hub” where you can either start at the bottom and enter the trails or climb to the top of this large metal bridge and get a big boost before you enter into the trails. There is a wide variety of green, blue and black trails here that everyone can have fun on. You can easily spend a larger chunk of the day playing around on these trails.

My favorite trails are:

• Thunderdome (blue dual slalom trail where you can race your friends down to the bottom. It includes berms, metal bridges and a whole lot of fun)!
• Fireline (blue flow trail with big berms, metal bridges and some nice table tops to practice on)
• Copperhead road (black diamond trail that is pretty technical. There is big chunky sections that you need to be on your toes for!)

Coler also offers water, bathrooms and an awesome open air café where you can sit outside at tables and take a break from biking. The café (Airship) offers a variety of coffee, smoothies, light snacks and beer). It’s a perfect spot to relax, enjoy the sunshine and get some snacks.

The G6 Castle-The Castle is a series of fun downhill flow trails that was newly built in October of 2022. Its so fun as you ride up to the top of the hub area and have a great view of the area and the trails. You will find many people running laps on laps and tons of e-bikes to boot!

My favorite trails are:

Catapult-(blue flow trail with bridges and nice table tops)

Medieval-(Very similar to Catapult with bridges, table tops and nice berms to practice on).

Check out my YouTube below to see what riding Slaughter Pen Trails and the Castle look like:

Lake Leatherwood- if you have more than a couple of days in Arkansas and are looking to explore other areas outside of Bentonville, Lake Leatherwood is a great area of downhill mountain biking. It’s a little bit over an hour drive to get out to this area from Bentonville. Lake Leatherwood is a shuttle serviced downhill area, so you can get in tons of runs! The shuttle takes about 5-10 minutes and runs pretty regularly. There is a north and a south hub with a total of 7 downhill trails.

After you have ridden to your hearts content, I would recommend driving 10 minutes to Eureka Springs. This charming little town has boutiques, art galleries and yummy restaurants to check out. The town is full of history as there are many preserved Victorian houses and even a haunted hotel (Crescent Hotel and Spa). I did a ghost tour the last time we were in town in the hotel and it was a ton of fun).

Where to Stay

I’ve been ton Bentonville and Northwest Arkansas as number of times over the past 10 years and I’ve camped, hoteled and AirBnb’ed it over a number of trips. It depends on your budget for the trip, how many folks you are going with and what kind of amenities you are looking for.

Camping- if you are looking to camp for the experience of it or are on a budget, there are a number of options in the Bentonville region. I’ve only camped in the spring time in Bentonville so I haven’t had an issue securing a campground. Bentonville has become really popular with mountain biking, so I would suggest reserving as soon as you get your plans set.

The locations for camping in the Bentonville area that include showers are the following:

• Coler Mountain Bike Preserve
• Prairie Creek Campground (about 26 minutes outside of Bentonville)

Hotels- there are a number of hotels in the Bentonville area. We have stayed near the airport in xzy hotel which was great. There are pros and cons to hotels when you are staying for a biking trip. We like to bring our bikes into the hotel to keep them safe. It is a little bit difficult bringing them into the hotel and finding a spot to keep them in the room and out of the way. It’s nice to stay in hotels at times if you are in a small group because they can be cheaper than renting a whole AirBnB and usually, you get breakfast included!

AirBnb

There is a wide number of Airbnbs/VRBOs out there catering to mountain bikers as the area has exploded with tourism in the last few years.

We recently stayed at this awesome house with friends and family over Thanksgiving time period in 2023. It has a nice yard with a gas fireplace (inside too), hot tub and a big place to launch off for your daily adventures on the trail.

The people who run this AirBnb were so nice and great hosts!

https://cozyozbentonville.com/

Eats

There are tons of wonderful restaurants and food trucks around in the Bentonville area. Below are a few places I have visited and enjoyed.

Pedaler’s Pub - is a delicious pizzeria and bar. I have been there numerous times on trips for lunch and dinner and it never has disappointed! http://www.pedalerspub.com/

The Hive-looking for a more upscale dinner or a place to grab a drink? The Hive focuses on seasonal ingredients sourced from local farmers. It is also located in the 21c Museum Hotel which is pretty awesome!

https://thehivebentonville.com/#menus

Drinks

Bike Rack Brewing- has a nice open air feel to it with garage doors that can be opened with the nicer weather. They had beers and some delicious aperol spritz's we ordered.

https://bikerackbrewing.com/

Bentonville Brewing Company -This is one of the OG breweries in town! It's a pretty large space with inside and outside eating spots. We rode here and ordered a beer and some delicious appetizers. 

https://bentonvillebrewing.com

Bentonville truly is an amazing place to visit. There are trails for all abilities and they are constantly building new trails which is so incredible to see. I've really enjoyed the food and drinks down in Bentonville which make it so much fun to end a long ride in the saddle in town with friends. I'd highly recommend checking out Bentonville with family or friends if you have never been!