Labor Day usually marks the moment Girdwood residents start talking about summer in the past tense. The shuttle traffic to the Forest Fairgrounds is a memory, the Blueberry Festival crowds have thinned, and the mental math shifts toward firewood and studded tires. That's the story most people tell themselves this time of year.
It's wrong this September, and the reason is sitting right at the base of the mountain: Alyeska is running Chair 6 for bikers again, and it hasn't done that in years.
What Chair 6 Actually Opens Up
Most summers, the Alyeska Bike Park runs its lift-served terrain off Bear Cub Quad and Ted's Express. That's the mountain locals know, a mix of beginner-friendly cruisers and intermediate flow trails accessible without much fuss. Glacier Bowl Express, the lift most people know as Chair 6, sits above that terrain and typically stays reserved for winter skiing. Getting bikes onto it means unlocking a section of the mountain that regular Saturday and Sunday bike park visitors don't normally see.
This year, Alyeska is running Chair 6 for riders on two separate weekends: September 5 and 6, then again on September 12 and 13, each day from noon to 6 p.m. The reopening includes a reshaped Chips and Salsa jump line, one of the terrain features locals have been asking about for a while. According to Unofficial Networks, which covers ski and mountain resort news across the West, the announcement landed well with the local riding community, and the outlet noted that "locals are loving a decision by Alaska's largest bike park to reopen its upper mountain terrain."
The timing matters. Alyeska's own mountain report, current as of early September, confirms the regular bike park is open Saturdays and Sundays through September 13, when the season closes for the year, weather permitting. So the four days when Chair 6 spins aren't a bonus tacked onto a long season. They're the last four days of the season, and they happen to be the only four days when the upper mountain is in play. If you've ridden Lower Iditarod, Winner Creek, Beaver Pond, or the Bikewood trails all summer and never gotten above them, this is the window. The Race Trail stays closed while the resort works through a snowmaking upgrade project, but that's the one exception on an otherwise fully open mountain.
For a mountain town that measures its year by lift schedules as much as calendar months, that's not a small thing. It's the resort handing back terrain it has kept off-limits, for exactly two weekends, right as everyone else assumes the season is winding down.
The Same Week, A Different Crowd
While Chair 6 riders are working the upper mountain, a completely different scene sets up in the Girdwood Community Room. The Girdwood Fungus Fair runs September 9 through 13, organized by the Turnagain Arm Mycological Society and Four Valleys Community School, with proceeds supporting both groups.
The lineup gives you a sense of how specific this event gets:
- A 21-and-over fermentation workshop at Girdwood Brewing Company, where GBC brew engineers Brett and Rory Marenco walk attendees through the yeast strains behind their beers, with tastings included
- Guided mushroom walks with visiting mycologists Steve Trudell, Noah Siegel, Joe Zapotosky, and Shannon Adams, plus a dedicated kid's foray
- Talks including "Mushroom ID and Foraging Safely in Alaska" from Kate Mohatt and a session from Ellen Twiname on the intersection of mycology and true crime
- A cultivation demo from the owners of Far North Fungi, teaching attendees to inoculate their own home mushroom kits
None of this competes with the bike park crowd for road space or parking. It's a different constituency entirely, and that's the point. The same five days that bring upper-mountain access back for riders also bring in mycologists from outside Alaska for guided forays through the valley's understory. Girdwood in mid-September is running two distinct events for two distinct groups, both drawing on the same shrinking window of good weather.
Oktoberfest Closes the Loop
A week after the fungus fair wraps and the Chair 6 lift makes its final bike park run, Girdwood Brewing Company throws its 10th Annual Oktoberfest on Saturday, September 19. It's the kind of date that only means something once you see it against the rest of the month: the bike park closed six days earlier, the fungus fair wrapped six days earlier, and now the town's most reliable gathering spot is hosting the event that traditionally marks the pivot from summer to fall.
Here's the compressed sequence, side by side:
| Dates | What's Happening | Why It's Different From a Normal Weekend |
|---|---|---|
| Sept 5-6 | Chair 6 (Glacier Bowl Express) spins for bikers | Upper mountain terrain hasn't been rider-accessible in years |
| Sept 9-13 | Girdwood Fungus Fair | Guided forays, brewery workshop, talks from visiting mycologists |
| Sept 12-13 | Chair 6 runs again, Bike Park's final weekend | Season closing day, weather permitting |
| Sept 19 | Girdwood Brewing's 10th Annual Oktoberfest | The town's traditional close-out gathering |
Four dates, fifteen days, three distinct communities of people, one mountain doing all the work.
What This Means If You Live Here
The easy read on Girdwood's calendar is that summer peaks around the Forest Fair in early July and the Blueberry Festival in mid-August, then tapers off until the lifts start turning for skiing. That's true for visitors. It's not true for the people who actually live in the valley.
Locals get the compressed version. The crowds that fill the Forest Fairgrounds and the Daylodge parking lot in July are gone by September, but the terrain that made July worth fighting for those crowds, the upper mountain, only opens for four specific days this month. The Fungus Fair only happens once a year, for five days, and it draws visiting experts who aren't around any other time. Oktoberfest only turns ten once. None of it repeats until next September, and by then Chair 6 will likely be running for skiers again, not bikers.
If you're weighing whether this year's shoulder season is worth rearranging a weekend around, the answer is in the math: Alyeska's own numbers put the 2026-27 ski season's projected opening around November 28, which means the mountain goes quiet for lift-served riding on September 13 and doesn't reopen for roughly eleven weeks. That gap is exactly why these two Chair 6 weekends carry more weight than a typical late-summer Saturday. It's not a preview of more to come. It's the last call.
Girdwood residents who treat Labor Day as the finish line are skipping the best two weekends the mountain has offered all year. The people who show up on September 5, or circle back on the 12th and 13th, get terrain access that won't come around again until the snow does.
If watching this kind of calendar play out year after year is part of why you love living in Girdwood, or if you're weighing what a place like this is worth while you're paying attention to it, the team at Calling Alaska Home knows this valley's rhythms as well as anyone. Get Your Free Home Valuation and see where you stand.
