BENTONVILLE, Ark. — The Coler Mountain Bike Preserve in Bentonville is back to full operation after closing some trails for over three months.
"Pretty much the day after the storm, we closed not only all the 20 miles of trail, but we closed our Greenway and all of our parking lots," lead trail crew Nate Renner said.
Renner said they slowly worked to get some parts of the preserve open, including the parking lots, the Greenway, Airship Coffee, and the campgrounds. Now, all the trails are finally open.
"Little by little, basically just expanded outwards into the woods, opening one trail at a time," he said.
For the past few months, his crew has been working around the clock to reopen the trails, but they didn't do it alone.
"We also had a ton of volunteer help. People from out of state even helping us [and] some contractors," Renner said. "It's been quite the effort."
Renner said they also hosted volunteer days where 200-plus people came out to help clean up Coler.
"Knowing how much the community loves this place kind of lit a fire in us to get it back to its former glory as quickly as possible," he said.
The repairs were one of their biggest challenges to date.
"When these trees fall, they take some of the trails with it, and there's a huge root ball hole in the center of where our trail used to be, so bringing that back to its former glory, restoring some of the hillsides was probably some of the biggest work."
If you're taking a stroll or mountain biking, you may still see fallen trees. Trail crews are still working to clean that up. For now, the bike preserve is shifting its focus to cosmetic repairs.
"The trail crews [are] kind of transitioning now to some upgrades, even some new features, some new lines," Renner said. "Some of the damage was so detrimental that ... it's opened the door for us to kind of innovate now and kind of upgrade in that way."
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