If you had the opportunity to move anywhere in the USA with the only deciding factor being access to high quality trails which city would you choose and why?
Bend, OR
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Gunnison/Crested Butte in the summer Sedona or st. George in the winter.
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+1 for Sedona
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Add Bentonville and Boise to the list.
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East Burke Vermont (get a fat bike for the winter)
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Brevard NC for year round riding
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For trails hard to not pick Bentonville above all others. Approaching 170 miles of trails and $75MM of investment for professionally designed trails, pretty amazing. Lots of other places that have better scenery but the trail quality and design in Bentonville is second to none.
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Don’t move here. 
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Now I definitely want to move there
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All joking aside, do the research. It ain’t for everyone. If you like rain, you’ll love it here. The magazines don’t talk about the region beyond beer and trail heads. Just sayin, lots to be desired here.
The answer might be partially dependent on what type of riding and trails you like (XC vs all-mountain with jumps and stuff vs lift assisted downhill, etc).
That said, I’ll second Bend, OR and Bentonville, AR. Helena, MT is a bit of a hidden gem. IMBA silver level, small but not tiny town (pop 30k), pretty affordable cost of living. Oh, and no sales tax which makes expensive bikes less expensive
Disclaimer…Im not a mountain biker yet.
But the pics that I saw from the mountain bike race in Telluride, Co were pretty awesome to me. I have some friends that rode up in the same event as Nate and I thought the scenery was incredible. Has me thinking about a mountain bike.
Have heard nothing but great things about Bentonville. Was looking forward to finally visiting in late October, but alas Big Sugar gravel race now postponed until next year.
Personally the best communities I’ve visiting for their surrounding trails have been 1) Park City and 2) Aspen. Granted these are “resort” cities, so maybe not feasible for a lot of people to move to.
It’s been a few years since last in Park City, but there are hundreds of miles of singletrack. It’s truly spectacular and you can spend hours just planning your routes and how you want to connect your ride together.
Trails encircle Aspen as well and lots of opportunities to chain things together for some truly epic rides. Aspen gets some grief for its expensive shops, restaurants, and hotels, but the riding in the area is pretty spectacular.
We’re heading up to Bentonville in about a month for a 1 week vacation. With the bikes and our dog, of course. It’s good to hear so many people recommending it. This will be our first visit.
Anyone spending time in Bentonville, AR, would be smart to also check out Northwoods/Cedar Glades in Hot Springs and the new Pinnacle Monument Trails in Little Rock - same groups working on these as worked on the Bentonville system. Investment in having world-class MTB systems in Arkansas has been unparalleled.
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Me too
We got back from Bentonville about a week ago. The mountain biking was awesome and we barely scratched the surface of the riding out there. Park Springs, Slaughter Pen, Hobbs State Park, Back 40 were the major trails we rode. We actually liked it so much we’re thinking of moving there.
Early stages (seeing what we can list our house for, for ex.) but it fits into our early retirement timeline so looks promising. We go back out in about a month to look at houses and, of course, do some more riding.