Back from Bentonville, a couple thoughts from the trip-
We stayed in a singletrack basecamps Airbnb in bella vista just off the back 40 trails. It was a great place, catered to bikes with a full stand/tool kit/bike lounge area, full kitchen with utensils and everything, and it was nice to not worry about having to sneak muddy bikes into a boughie hotel. There’s a ton of them in the area, and if we visit again, I’d stay in Bentonville with an easy ride to the slaughterpen trails or walk to a restaurant vice 25m drive.
There’s a lot of sharp, flat shale(?) rocks everywhere, locals were calling them “arrowheads.” We were both on enduro or DD casing meaty tires, and I could see XC tires and thin casings taking a beating. Lots of locals rocking knee pads, probably a good idea and I would have brought a set had I known.
We were definitely early season, we had one day in the 60s and everything else 38-52. We still ran into quite a few people; I can imagine it’s an absolute madhouse in the summer.
Three or four days of riding is probably good for a first visit. We had three days and lost half of one waiting for things to dry out after a midnight thunderstorm. We split the days am/pm with a lunchbreak and did two separate riding areas to try to hit more. Aside from the back 40 loop, they’re all short trails and easy to loop into however much distance you feel comfortable with.
There are enough branching options that you don’t need to seek out specific trails to ride, it’s about as good to wonder around lost. I wish that we could have done all of all American from South to north, it’s supposed to be a trip. Most of slaughterpen is blue level and not overly technical. Lot’s of flow options, and everything is rollable/low consequence, even for the bigger jumps. Great for new or mid level riders and to get lots of reps in and build confidence.
If you ride past the bush push and don’t ride it clean to the rhino, you’re a little girlie man who probably rides an ebike.
Lastly, living in florida, I forgot my first gen reverb stealth gets molasses slow and unusable when it’s 35*F.
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