Shredding in NWA

About nine years ago, a good friend of mine accepted a postdoctoral position at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. Prior to accepting this position, she lived in Boulder, Colorado for seven years. So when she told me she didn’t like AR, I thought she was just spoiled from living in one of the most desirable places in the United States. And then I went to visit her...and well, I didn’t disagree with her.

Fast forward to now. I was going to Bentonville, Arkansas for the NICA National Conference. And I couldn’t wait.  I will reflect on my NICA National Conference later...but for now...

Over the past few years, Bentonville and Northwest Arkansas (NWA) has become a mountain bike mecca. Apparently the Walton family has found a love of mountain biking and dumped millions of dollars into building insanely fun trails. I have heard first hand how awesome the trails are - all free to the public and accessible from town.

Our National meeting was Wednesday June 13th through Saturday June 17th. We planned on arriving a day early to get settled and well, ride of course. I had my Juliana boxed up at Halter’s and shipped using BikeFlights. My bike was shipped to Phat Tire in Bentonville were it was built and ready for me when I arrived.  They also had beer at the shop.  Can you beat that?

The first thing I noticed when I landed and picked up from the airport was how much it changed since my last visit. New houses and developments between the airport and Bentonville. I assume most are for Walmart Headquarter employees but with Bentonville now on the map for riding, how many people relocated here just for it’s trails?!

 

Our accomodations for the week were about a mile outside of town at “the Bike Cottage” - it was a great house with access to the Slaughter Pen trails right out the driveway. Once we arrived in town, we rode everywhere, sometimes on the street...sometimes on the trail. I will admit that drivers were patient with all the bikes, often waving and giving us the thumbs up. The downtown is adorable, filled with good eats, drinks, and coffee. It was weird to see a Rapha store but then I was reminded they were bought out by RZC Investments (associated with the Walton’s).

Day 1 of riding - it had just finished raining when we arrived so we were limited on trails to ride.  We managed to get in some riding in both Phase 1 and 2 of Slaughter Pen.  Lots of flow with limestone chunks and flakes.  We found some features to play on.

After, we were helping mark a self guided ride at the Back 40.  Although the trails were still manicured, I'd say these were more like our trails home.  I enjoyed the trails of the Back 40 but wanted to get back to Coler and Slaughter Pen.

Once the conference started, we were provided with guided rides of about 2 hours to places of our choice.  On day 2, I got to ride Coler with some really rad ladies.  We hit one trail over and over, with little table tops and berms.  We also got to see some of the gnar that is in their local enduro and finally making our way up to the Hub.  The trails were still wet so we cut one of our trails short and hopped out on the street to head back to town.

Day 3 we jumped on a Slaughter Pen ride which hit some of the stuff we missed on Day 1.  My favorite was Choo Choo.  We got to ride a trail that had an AR state rock - in the shape of the rock.  We also hit the infamous Oz Trail that Grayson rides to school on (which was just down the street from our accommodations).

Day 4 we had "free time" to ride whatever we wanted.  We hopped in the Cognition van and headed an hour north to Eureka Spring to check out Leatherwood Lake trails.  Holy.  The trails officially opened a few days before we rode them.  We climbed up, which was about 15 minutes at our leisurely pace.  At the top, there are a variety of ways to get down from blue intermediate runs to double black diamond.  

The trails were a blast! We took turn shuttling after a few runs to get the maximum amount of riding in before dark.  Some crazy features out there.

Our last day (Day 5) we headed back up to Coler to the Hub.  We met up with a bunch of other NICA peeps and hit Cease and Desist (well, I didn't hit it but watched others send it).  Such fun stuff.

I have been trying to wrap my head around how much awesome riding there is in NWA.  I am not going to deny that summer is brutal there - the humidity made the heat feel that much worse. So bad that the heat wave we are having now in NJ doesn't really phase me.  I would definitely love to get back there...soon.