We had done hike to Slaughter Pen on 27th April 2025 . It is located near Bentonville, Arkansas State.
Hike LocationName: Slaughter Pen Trail
Distance: 12 miles from Walton Gym (approx.)
Total hiking distance: 4.8 miles
Elevation Gain: 442 ft.
Hike Team: Amita, Indrajeet, Ishan, Nuthan, Abhijeet, Zhen, Shawn and me.
Hiking Experience:
After long waiting for a good weather we finally planned for first hike of this season. As usual we got good response from everyone and ready for the hike, however weather had second thoughts and let us down(has been raining the entire weekend). As we dont give up, we plan for next weekend(27th April). Weather forecast also was looking good. Finally the day arrived. Abhijeet and me reached Zhen's place by 10:15 am, and we left for parking lot in Abhijeet's car. Shawn directly left for the trail parking lot(came to know later why he went separately). Amita and Family invited their friend Nuthan and they all came directly to the parking lot. The trail was near Bentonville and it took just about 20 mins to reach the place. After scouting the place to find the trail, we realized we are not at right spot, thanks to All Trails app, we got the cordinates of the exact location, which was 2.5 miles ahead. we reached there, able to find our trail. Weather was good, no Sun and just a light breeze. We started hike around 11:15 am. Indrajeet was the only one who has been on this trail before and also shared the history that the trail is famoud for biking and the former President has done biking here.
Initially we started on a cement road and little disappointed that it was not natural trail. As we took a right turn could see gravel road ahead. We set on All American Trail which is a green blzed trail and wide enough for two people to walk side by side. The trail is shared by hikers, bikers so need to watchful of bikers and give them way. There are so many small wooden bridges on the trail to encourage bikers and make the trail more challenging and fun to them. Unfortunately our photographer Shawn has not brought his pro equipment. As we all know, when people meet during weekend, first several minutes goes on enquiring, talking as there will be so much to catchup. On top of that we have a new member in our group , Nuthan who recently moved to Bentonville. So it started with Shawn's military outfit and his peculiar boots. Nuthan was very fond of them and this led to our promotional tour. Soon Abhijeet started showing the Samsung photography enhancements. Then we scaled our hike to next level with help of Ishan's Drone. With all these discussions along with good weather we didnt realize/focus on the slope of the trail and for next half an hour we are having great time and enjoying the view of the stream flowing to the right side of the trail. On left side we have construction going on building more and more wooden bridges for bikers to do somersaults. aWe reached an open arean filled with lot of green grass and decided to give chance for Ishan to promote/show his drone. The drone was very good and he has great control in flying it and safe landing it. Son this turned out as a science class on how drone works, technology behind it and precautions to be taken(based on Abhijeet's experiences). We took some pictures with drone and Ishan landed the drone after a catchy Hindi Phrase from Amita "Ped pe hatak jayega" (gets stuck in trees). Seems like they had experience in the past and had to climb the tree to get it back.
We continued our hike and were having three serious conversations , one between Zhen and Abhijeet about chakras, tattoos etc, second Shawn and Nuthan, with Nuthan still admiring out team and third Amita and Ishan typical mother and child conversations. We hiked further in between admiring the courage and endurance of the bikers and giving way to them. we reached a point where saw a stone man(statue) and decided to take picture there. Once again Ishan came to rescue with his drone. After we took a photo, we wanted to explore more with drone but Amita cautioned again "Ped pe hatak jayega" and dropped the idea. As we are doing the loop we came close to our starting point and Shawn suddenly mentioned he has lunch plan with his friends and need to leave. Has not mentioned this earlier and that is why came directly to the parking lot. Almost we hiked for 1hr 15 mins by this time and rest of us decided to continue further. Now groups got changed with Abhijeet and Nuthan leading the hike , Zhen and me one group and Amita and Ishan another. Indrajeet has been shuffling between ours and Amita's like people switch between rooms in zoom call. The trail was steep and gave us a good work out with Sun started peeking in.
The trail has multiple routes at many places, but we were able to stay on course with help of the map and Indrajeet's good sense of direction. Witnessed great skills from Amita to motivate and encourage Ishan to continue the hike.The trail has many u-turns and became narrow. We reached the same path where started earlier and could find the big mushroom to the tree trunk and water stream this time flowing to our left. We saw turtles taking rest on one of the fallen trees. We took pictures at start of the trail and soon reached the parking lot by 2:00 pm. We all were hungry after a good hike. We had two variety of Biryanis, Salad for our lunch. Abhijeet brought home made Biryani which was very good. Felt good after having the lunch. Left the parking lot and reached to our places by 2:40 PM. All is Well.
