I just returned from a solid four days of riding in Bentonville, AR. It’s a fun town with a bunch of bike shops, restaurants, ice cream stores and of course, the Walmart museum. 😁 Oh, and many trails in and around town.
We stayed in Bella Vista, which is 20 mins away and where the Back 40 trail system is located. These trails run behind, around, and through a hilly suburban community. It’s all bench cut, scree covered, singletrack. If you live in Bella Vista, it’s great having these trails in your backyard …but I would not say it’s a must do trail for outside visitors.
A local couple, who I befriended some years back and who live in Bella Vista gave us a tour of two other trails, Little Sugar and Tunnel Vision. Like any place, when you know the trails and the best direction to ride them, you will have a better experience. We certainly had fun. They even took us to a secret beer stash in the middle of our ride. I could see how this would really suck if you had to fiddle with trail forks or accidentally found yourself riding in a direction that wasn’t ideal.
The draw and what’s cool about Bentonville is how bike-centric the town is. There are whole families riding $4,000 mountain bikes, folks shopping with cargo eBikes and buildings designed so you can ride to your 4th floor office. There are a half dozen bike shops and a Specialized satellite location. It is also home to YT bikes. You see bike racks everywhere with expensive bikes (unlocked). There is also a cool coffee shop (with beer taps) strategically placed between the mountain bike trails and a pathway that leads you back to town.
You can access all the signature trails from this pathway. It runs all the way from Fayetteville, through Bentonville and continues on past the Walmart corporate campus. There are pumptrack style dirt trails that run beside, through and over the pathway. You’ll also find these weird off-shoot trails that have art exhibit style metal structure you can ride on. It’s a bit gimmicky but cool to see. The actual mountain bike trails can be accessed by climbing various singletrack connectors, which split off from the pathway.
One area called Slaughter Pen was my favorite and IMO worth an afternoon. You climb a mellow trail to different peaks, one of which is called “The Castle.” From there you can ride down several flow trails. There is also a skills park and drop progression zone. All the runs are short but well built so you can session this place all day.
The other well known spot is called Coler. I didn’t think it was that great. It consist of a paved access path that you ride to the top of a hill (there are no mountains here). From there you have several ways down. The funnest run is a short, double black diamond slopestyle course with big drops and gap jumps. It’s the type of trail that requires a fullface helmet and enduro or DH bike. Since we were all on trail bikes, we did not ride it- thus no fun was had. The other options were a mix of beginner/intermediate flow trails or advanced chunky and scree covered technical trails. The flow trails were not steep enough. Getting enough speed to clear some tabletops required too much pedaling. Elevation is like 200’ so the runs are all short. After riding everything 2-3x, it got pretty boring.
I hear there are “better” trails an hour or so outside of Bentonville. I doubt I’ll ever go back to explore them. Is it worth a visit? Maybe if one lived close enough to drive. Considering that Kingdom Trails in VT offer more variety with 4x the elevation, I’d go there before I got on a plane back to North West Arkansas.
