Bentonville, Arkansas is quickly becoming one of the best mountain biking towns in the United States. It is home to hundreds of miles of trails in several areas that are all interconnected by paved greenways that serve as the backbone of the trail systems. Bentonville is the home of the Walton family who founded Walmart and the Walton Family Foundation has made heavy investments to build these trails and attract biking enthusiasts from all over the world.
Trail Systems in Bentonville
There are three main trails systems in Bentonville; Slaughter Pen Trails, Coler MTB Preserve and the Razorback Greenway. The paved 36 mile long Razorback Greenway runs from Bentonville all the way to Fayetteville and cuts through the Slaughter Pen system. Slaughter Pen is the original trail system in Bentonville and is located right in the middle of town and features 23+ miles of MTB trails. The 300 acre Coler MTB preserve is a few miles away to the west of downtown, but you can ride to it via sidewalks that are part of the Greenway system. There are 16 miles of MTB trails and 2 miles of paved greenway. That’s where you’ll find Fireline.
What is Fireline?
There are 3 types of trails at Coler. There’s a really nice paved greenway that runs the length of the preserve, single track trails of varying difficulty and machine and handcut downhill runs. Rated a blue intermediate trail, Fireline is a machine cut downhill thrill ride that runs 0.7 miles from the Hub at the top of the mountain. The trail is wide, smooth and has big, beautiful berms and several tabletop jumps throughout. There’s only 11 ft. of climbing and 177 ft. of descent on this downhill run.
They recently added a packed cinder return trail called Pedal Assist that winds its way back to the Hub so you can session this trail with ease. So you can use up those batteries if you have an E-bike, or get your strength training workout on the way back up.
Is It AMTB Friendly?
There’s no denying this is a fast, flowy and super fun trail, but is it accessible for AMTB? Yes, it is, and it’s one of my favorite trails in the entire Northwest Arkansas area. Like many machine built trails, it’s wide enough for three wheeled handcycles and recumbents. It’s even smooth enough to be rideable on a rigid offroad bike, but you will probably want suspension for doing the jumps at speed. It’s rated a blue for regular bikes mostly because of the big berms and jumps, and I would rate it a blue intermediate for AMTB as well. You can ride it conservatively (slower) and still have a blast, but then challenge yourself by adding more speed. If you take the jumps with enough speed, you will catch air on the approach to the tabletop jumps. You won’t clear the tabletop unless you’re on a Bowhead, but it’s still a lot of fun. For maximum fun, get a couple of friends and run down Fireline in a group, it’s a blast!! This might be the best AMTB trail in Bentonville! Check the video below to see why.
You can watch a full trail montage in the video below:
Trail Verified by AMTB Hub
