A Beginner’s Guide to Mountain Biking in Bentonville Arkansas
Bentonville, Arkansas is the perfect destination for mountain biking. It sits in the corner of Northwest Arkansas and has an extensive amount of trails to explore. We visited in late December and the weather was cold, but if we bundled up we could comfortably bike the trails. We’re looking forward to visiting again when it’s warmer! In the meantime, we wanted to share the trails we explored as beginner mountain bikers.
For reference:
Greens are the easier routes
Blues are intermediate
Blacks are difficult
Coler Mountain Bike Preserve
Coler sits in the west part of Bentonville and has around 20 miles of trails to ride. We took 3rd street west and entered on the south side. About a mile in at “The Homestead”, we found a coffee shop that’s accessible only by trail, Airship Coffee. This is the perfect destination to immerse in nature and sip a cup of coffee.
For more details and a map of Coler, check out the OZ Trails website.
Green: Good Vibrations
The first trail we hopped on was Good Vibrations, which was the first right after entering the south side of the preserve. This trail was the perfect intro to mountain biking. It had a good balance of curves and hills while not being too intense. Every mile or so, it would meet back up with the main cement trail, making it easy to take a break and reflect on the experience.
Blue: Oscar’s Loop
Testing out a blue was definitely a step-up in difficulty! There was more climbing, more obstacles like rocks to climb over, and a slightly intimidating drop-off on one side. While all of these things added to the challenge, they also added to the fun of pedaling your way through this beautiful terrain.
Slaughter Pen
Slaughter Pen has multiple starting points. We spent time on the west side near Park Springs Park and the southern side near downtown. On our last day, we were going to explore the north side but on our way Cody punctured the sidewall of his tire. We barely scratched the surface of the area so are excited to get back and ride more of these trails!
For more details and a map of Slaughter Pen, check out the OZ Trails website.
Green: Black Apple Creek
Black Apple Creek was less than a mile from our Airbnb, making it easy to hop on over a lunch break. The trail starts in Park Springs Park and makes its way north until it meets back up with the All American. We loved the unique water crossings and tunnel. In some parts, it felt closer to a blue than a green, but overall it was a challenging yet comfortable ride!
Green: All American
The All American starts in downtown Bentonville and crosses the main cement greenway trail every so often. This trail felt like the perfect introduction to mountain biking and was the connector of many of the other green trails in Slaughter Pen. Since it did connect to a lot of the other trails, we ended up biking this trail the most.
Green: Zeppelin Trail
The only photo we snapped while on this trail was the unfortunate experience of repairing a flat tire.
The Zeppelin Trail was one of the trails off of the All American. We decided to explore the north part of Slaughter Pen and this was one of the ways to get there. It had some solid obstacles but wasn’t anything too technical. We wish we could have explored more of this trail, but we had to bail when Cody got a flat partway through.
In Town
While there are a ton of mountain biking trails to explore around the area, we wanted to highlight biking in town. Since Bentonville is a popular biking town, there are plenty of bike lanes and people are familiar with watching for bikers on the road. This helped make riding in town safer and easier to navigate.
Bike to Onyx Coffee
Each weekday morning, we’d hop on our bikes and make the quick bike ride from our Airbnb to Onyx Coffee Lab. When we arrived, there were a ton of spots to park our bike, making this an easy destination to bike to.
Bike to Airship Coffee
There are a couple different Airship Coffee locations, like at Coler Mountain Bike Preserve, but this one sits a little farther north from downtown. It’s known as “the pumphouse” because it’s in the old water pump building.
There were a ton of bike racks to store our bikes and an open seating area outdoors that we could see being lively in warmer months.
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Bentonville is the perfect destination if you’re looking to dabble in mountain biking. It’ll leave you excited to come back and explore more of the trails. We hope this helps you feel comfortable planning a trip to the “mountain biking capital of the world”!
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