Festival at Mt. Si

The Festival at Mt. Si opens on a Friday evening in August with music in the bars and restaurants along North Bend Way. For the 2026 festival, the Downtown Music Crawl began at 6:00 p.m. on August 7 with Justin Howl at Rio Bravo. It worked down the street through the night: Albuquerque Press at Volition Brewing Co., Sheyenne Leonard at Mastrogiannis Distillery & Winery, Joshua Sean Croizier at Twin Peaks Pub, and Buddy Do-Wrong & The Ne’er Do Wells at The Moose. The Stacy Jones Band played the Pour House Bar & Grill from ten until midnight. The city leaves the streets open for the crawl, and the crowd moves from venue to venue on the sidewalks and through the crosswalks. The crawl is the newest part of the program. The City of North Bend announced it as new to the festival in 2024.

The festival falls on the second weekend of August each year in a town the organizers place 30 minutes east of Seattle. Admission is free.

The parade from Torguson Park

On Saturday morning the parade forms at Torguson Park and steps off at 10:30, rain or shine. The Kiddie Parade lines up first on North Bend Way in front of the park. Children come on decorated bikes, in wagons, or on foot, with no sign-up. The Grand Parade follows with dance teams, community groups, and business vans and trucks showing their logos. Floats are pulled by trucks and carry a fire extinguisher. Animal entries march with their owners, who clean up after them. Candy throwing is forbidden by law, so it is handed out instead. Each group performs for one minute in front of the Judge’s Stand. New medians now divide North Bend Way, and the organizers advise watching from the north side of the street.

The judges’ results for 2026 put IGNITE Dance & Yoga first, Straight Chiropractic Park St. Healing Arts second, and Jeff Warren, State Farm Agent, third. The grand marshals were the Wyrsch family.

Si View Park, Saturday and Sunday

From downtown the festival moves to Si View Park, by the community center on SE Orchard Drive, which is closed to through traffic for the weekend. Craft and business vendors keep their booths open from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday and from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday. The beer garden is for those 21 and over, and in 2026 the Rotary Club of Snoqualmie Valley ran it. It takes cash only, as does the festival merchandise table, and the grounds have no ATM. The silent auction accepts credit cards. Visitors may bring their own food to the picnic tables and the open lawn. Well-behaved pets are allowed except in the food areas, and riding skateboards and bicycles on the grounds is not. Lost children are brought to the Information Booth.

The Main Stage runs all day. Valley 104.9 broadcasts the performances live, and its announcers give play-by-play commentary on the festival. In 2026 the stage opened at noon on Saturday with Joe Doria, Farko & Shane Shook, a jam band that, in the organizers’ words, “makes it up on the fly.” Justcos and The Children Of The Day followed. At the same hour, on the Kid Zone stage, The Harmonica Pocket built a band in front of the children. At 2:15 came the pie-eating contest, presented by Twede’s Cafe and listed by the committee as the Cherry Pie Eating Contest. Afterward the organizers reported, “There was not a single pie that got spared.”

The Snoqualmie Strings Youth Orchestra played next and closed its set with a Star Wars number. Lucia Flores-Wiseman, a finalist on The Voice from Maple Valley according to the Snoqualmie Valley Record, sang after them. Then came Sweet N’ Juicy, a fruit funk trio from Portland. The belly dancers of Veils of the Nile brought the audience into their routine at the end. Cody Bartels played country, and Eden closed the night from 8:00 to 9:30.

Sunday is shorter. The chili cook-off runs from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and was sponsored in 2026 by Mt Si Sports + Fitness. The judges chose “White Gold,” made by Mama’s Boy Chili Company (Justin Voshall and Cyndi Moody). The People’s Choice went to “Breakfast Chili,” made by the Beefologists (Dan Clapp). Mandi LaPoint of Team Brodie placed second on both lists with “Mouth of Da South.” Family Fun Day filled the Kid Zone from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. On the Main Stage, 13 Til Midnight, a Taylor Swift tribute band, played at noon. Austin Jenckes closed the festival from 2:00 to 4:00. The Valley Record calls him Duvall-born, and the festival billed him as “The Hometown Star.” The weekend also holds the Si View Hoop Shoot and a pickleball tournament, and Si View Metro Parks lists a 5K run.

The Wyrsch fireworks, 2026

On August 5, 2026, the City of North Bend and Eastside Fire and Rescue canceled the annual fireworks show. Heat was expected to continue and increase over the weekend, and fire conditions could worsen by Saturday. The city also warned that air quality could change quickly with the wind. The city’s notice gave the show’s date as Saturday, August 8. The Valley Record’s June preview had placed it on Friday night at Torguson Park.

The Wyrsch family has paid for the fireworks for 50 years. Mayor Mary Miller said, “On behalf of the community, I want to extend my deepest gratitude to the Wyrsch family for their extraordinary generosity and commitment over the past 50 years in sponsoring our fireworks display.” She added, “This was a very tough decision made with careful consideration and the best interest of our community in mind.” Some people read the notice as canceling the whole festival. On Sunday morning the organizers posted: “Our event is not canceled. Just last nights fireworks.”

Volunteers and the Boyce scholarship

The festival is put on by the North Bend Educational and Cultural Association (NBECA), a nonprofit staffed entirely by volunteers and paid for by community donations. The festival is NBECA’s largest fundraiser of the year. Its main purpose is the Judy K. Boyce Community Service Scholarship Fund, which goes to graduating seniors from Mt. Si and Two Rivers who have volunteered in the community. NBECA’s own history page says the association formed in 1999 and has planned the festival since then, and the city also gives 1999. The vendor page says NBECA has organized it annually since 1995. Morgan Henley, the festival’s music and entertainment contact, also organized the 2026 event through Morgan Henley Presents, according to the Valley Record.

The organizers’ thank-you post for 2026 named Jessica Self for the parade, Kathryn Podschwit for the vendors, Dorie Ross for sponsorship, and Maddy for the Kid Zone. Their own figures for the crowd differ. The history page claims more than 25,000 visitors a year. The vendor page counts roughly 2,000 to 3,000 people across the weekend’s events. The post closed: “See y’all next year! Be Excellent to Each Other.”

Jamboree Days, River Festival, Alpine Days

North Bend’s summer festival dates to 1947. It was Snoqualmie Valley Jamboree Days through 1968, River Festival from 1969 to 1973, and Alpine Days from 1974 to 1994. It has been the Festival at Mt. Si since 1995. It skipped 2020 and 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic, and the organizers count 2026 as the 79th annual festival. The town’s parades are older than the festival. Photographs at the Snoqualmie Valley Historical Museum show a parade forming on July 4, 1908, with Mayor Peter Maloney at its head, and girls packing a float in July 1910. Pictures from 1949 show a band rehearsal, the drill team and band of North Bend High School marching, Hill’s Hardware’s Frigidaire truck on Main Street, and the Jamboree Riding Club rehearsing.

“We’ve got something for everybody,” said George Macris, president of the North Bend Chamber of Commerce, of the 1975 Alpine Days. It began with a teenage street dance on Friday night. The program included a raft race sponsored by the Kiwanis, a salmon bake, a chicken barbecue, a Sallal Grange fair, a women’s baseball tournament sponsored by the North Bend Tavern, and a Bicentennial Picnic. One of eight students was to be crowned Alpine Days Queen.

In 1983 the American Legion Pickering Post carried the flag. Jesse Santini marched with the color guard. He held the Medal of Honor for heroism in combat with the Marine Corps in Korea and lived in North Bend. The grand marshal that year was Ed Lane, called the Valley’s number one horseman. He was 80 and still working his “horse spread” outside town. “I’ve never missed a North Bend parade in 25 years,” he said. He and his wife, Penny, had ridden their horses in every parade, and he declined the convertible.

The 1987 parade crowd stopped to look at a logger’s load of old-growth timber. In 1988 Alpine Days King Todd Mills and Queen Kari Miller rode in the convertible. Candidates for King and Queen were judged on talent, poise, and ticket sales. The grand marshals were Jack Ferrell, a forest ranger and scoutmaster, and Mary Ferrell, a den leader and Sunday school teacher.

In 1993 the grand marshal of the Alpine Days Torchlight Parade was Evelyn “Evie” Offield. She was one of six children born at her family’s home on Ballarat Avenue, graduated from North Bend High School in 1940, and served in the Army, including in a women soldiers’ theater group. She then taught third grade at North Bend Elementary for decades. The program that year listed a Twin Peaks spoof at “Twin Peaks High School (Mount Si),” a Victorian Garden Party at the Vinnedge residence, and a mini-aquarium on wheels at Si View Park. In 1994, at what the Record called North Bend Days, children crowded around the clowns J.P. Patches and Gertrude for autographs in Kids Alley.

Jack McCullough led the 2002 parade. He had retired that year after 11 years as principal of Snoqualmie Middle School. Two years later Nels Melgaard, owner of the Nursery at Mount Si, drove a bed of flowers down Main Street in the scoop of his tractor. The Valley Record reported that he took the first-place trophy in the floats division of the Alpine Days judging.