Hot Springs' Mountain Bike Festival Moved to October. Northwoods Is Still Growing Underneath It.

Since its first year in 2019, the Gudrun-Northwoods Mountain Bike Festival has been held in November. So why does the eighth edition start on Friday, October 23, two weeks earlier than any before it? The answer comes from calendars outside Hot Springs. The festival's longest race now avoids deer season, and its enduro now counts in a statewide series. The trail system everyone will be riding is partway through an expansion that broke ground in April, and the plan calls for staff and volunteers to help finish the new trail, a few hills over from the start line.

Why the Festival Moved Two Weeks Earlier

Visit Hot Springs Trails Coordinator Traci Berry announced the new dates on December 31, 2025, in a Northwoods Trails release. The release made two changes at once.

The first is about hunting and weather. Chuck Campbell organizes the Ouachita Triple Crown, a 180-mile bikepacking race that leaves from the Northwoods-Cedar Glades trails and loops Lake Ouachita on the Ouachita Trail, the Womble Trail and the Lake Ouachita Vista Trail. He said the move "is a game changer." "We'll no longer be competing with modern gun season, and can reasonably expect better weather," he said. When a race runs through the backcountry around a lake, sharing the woods with deer hunters matters.

The second change is about who runs the gravity racing. The Gudrun Enduro is now a round of the Arkansas Enduro Series, and the Ozark Foundation produces it. That team also runs the Arkansas Downhill Series and the Arkansas Graveler. Berry said the series draws riders from more than 20 states each season, and out-of-state riders made up 47 percent of registrations in 2025. Starting in 2026, the series also has a novice category with courses for beginners and for juniors 12 and under.

The festival has been reaching beyond Garland County for a while. Berry said Gudrun has drawn competitors from nine to 18 states each year, and riders from Canada and the UK have come in each of the last seven years. She said it began with a small slate of events and now has six. Joining a statewide series puts the enduro on the schedule of riders who travel to every round.

The Weekend, Hour by Hour

Visit Hot Springs published the full schedule when registration opened on May 3, 2026, in its registration release. A September 22 post on northwoodstrails.org repeated the October 23–25 dates and the same lineup. The schedule is marked subject to change.

All the Saturday and Sunday events are at Northwoods-Cedar Glades Trails, 461 Wildcat Road. Saturday's cross-country race has the most history. Berry said the Attila the Hun XC is the longest consecutively running mountain bike race in Arkansas, and 2026 is its 34th year, so it is older than the festival itself.

Where the Weekend Reaches Downtown

Most of the festival happens on the hilltop, but Friday evening starts downtown. Slow Roll check-in opens at 4 p.m. at 420 Eats, the pre-ride meeting is at 4:50, and riders roll out at 5. Visit Hot Springs says the route goes through the historic lobby of the Arlington Hotel Resort. The Opening Night Party starts at 6 p.m. A full route map hasn't been published, so check northwoodstrails.org closer to the date.

Sunday at noon has the event with the youngest riders. The Strider Race is a kids' race, and it is free. It comes two hours after the Mini Enduro and an hour before the Waffles & Coffee Time Trial, so a family can watch the morning enduro starts and stay for the kids' race without coming back on a different day. Registration runs through BikeReg.

Hundreds of riders come to Northwoods for the festival each year. Readers of Arkansas Outside have voted it the No. 1 trail system in Arkansas six times, most recently in March 2026. Part of the system that earned that ranking broke ground on an expansion this spring.

Under the Race Course, a Construction Project

On December 5, 2025, The Oaklawn Foundation and Berry announced a $350,000 grant to expand the trails at Northwoods' Waterworks section, according to the Visit Hot Springs release. The site is a 2,000-acre city property with three lakes, and Sanderson Lake is the only one without trail around it yet. The grant pays for these pieces:

• Sanderson Lake trail: two miles of green trail on the west side and four miles of blue trail on the northeast and east sides.
• A longer double-track loop: 550 feet of wider UTV trail for staff and emergency crews to reach the east side of Sanderson Dam from Snakehead Drive. It also creates a 2.5-mile double-track loop for trail users.
• The Ragnarök connector: a bridge 65 feet long and five feet wide across the creek below Bethel Dam, plus 650 feet of trail linking the bottom of Ragnarök to Bearcat Pass. The 0.2-mile climb out of Ragnarök will open to two-way foot and bike traffic.
• Paddling on the upper lakes: rock steps and a put-in for non-motorized boats on Dillon Lake above Dillon Dam, and a 500-foot portage trail up the Sanderson Dam so paddlers can carry boats between Dillon and Sanderson.
• A kayak rental kiosk and new signage: a leased kiosk, plus redesigned trail signs and new water trail signs.

Berry said the new trail will create a two-way loop around all three lakes, open to bikes and foot traffic. The Ragnarök bridge will also give riders a shorter route back to Hub H, the gravity hub where riders head for Lucky 13, Blue Jay and Ragnarök. Once it's finished, Waterworks will grow from 22.5 miles of trail to nearly 30. Together with Cedar Glades Park, the system will total about 40 miles, less than 10 minutes from downtown.

So far, that is a plan rather than a finished trail. Arkansas Outside reported on May 22, 2026, that ground was broken in April and the expansion was underway. That report gave no completion date. Until an opening is announced, treat the Sanderson Lake loop, the Ragnarök bridge and the paddling access as under construction.

Who Is Finishing the New Trail

The Ozark Foundation's statewide team is taking over the enduro at Gudrun. The new trail is being built a different way. Visit Hot Springs hired Arkansas-based Affordable Trail Solutions, run by Amber and Jeff Gannon, who have built at Northwoods before. Berry described "a hybrid trail-building model that will involve help from staff and volunteers in finishing off trail as it is cut in by the trail builders." That lets the contractor lower its cost per linear foot, so the grant money goes further.

When she announced the grant, Berry said she was excited "for the community ownership this has the potential of creating." The festival also leans on local partners. Berry credits TACO, the Trail Advocacy Coalition of the Ouachitas, along with Jackalope Cycling and Campbell for helping put the weekend on. The same groups of people help with both the event and the new trail.

The Greenways Grew Too

Hot Springs' paved trails have also grown in the past year, closer to the center of town. On October 10, 2025, the city dedicated the last section of the Hot Springs Creek Greenway at the Jean White Wallace Wetlands Trailhead, 570 T.V. Hill Road. That was almost exactly a year ago. Work on the Stokes Creek Greenway Trail started in May 2025 on a segment from Kimery and Leonard Streets to Richard Street. Hot Springs Parks and Recreation held a ribbon cutting in July 2026 for that first completed phase, the Sentinel-Record reported.

With those greenways finished, the paved trails in town have a new trailhead and a new phase to use this fall. The Sanderson Lake singletrack, the Dillon Lake put-in and the kayak kiosk at Northwoods are the pieces still to come.

Some buyers plan where they live around trail access. If that's you, the team at Capital Sotheby's International Realty can walk you through what's changing at Northwoods and the greenways and which Hot Springs neighborhoods sit closest to them. Schedule a complimentary market consultation, and we'll go over the map with you.