What to know about the winter saunas popping up around Newport County

Several mobile saunas now offer winter beachgoers an opportunity to enjoy the ocean in new ways

Photos by Maaike Bernstrom for Newport Life

On a Friday in early December, the sky is a bright, crisp blue and the air temperature a balmy 16 degrees Fahrenheit. The water at South Shore Beach in Little Compton is calm and, if not for being able to see your breath, you might trick yourself into thinking it looks warm. Especially as two women are wading about, seemingly unbothered.

As they emerge from the sea, the pair walks up the beach towards the rocks, where a small sauna is parked at the edge of the shore, and the inside temperature is a robust 180 degrees.

Within, a few others are mingling, stretched out over cedar benches and facing a large window overlooking the expansive seascape. They breathe in the scent of eucalyptus, which is wafting with steam from a woodfired stove. For those who’ve already dipped into the sea, the trace of salt lingers on their skin and in their hair, a sense of warmth replacing the heart-stopping chill of the water.

The movement from hot to cold and back again is invigorating and restorative. And the overall mood is one of contentment. For these seaside saunagoers, there is nowhere else to be, at least not in this moment.

The occasion? A Friday morning “Sauna Social,” a regular occurrence throughout the winter months, thanks to Kayla Sibilia and her mobile sauna, aptly named ALTÆR Sauna.

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ALTÆR Sauna was the first of three mobile saunas to pop up at Newport County beaches. Now, on most weekends, you can find Small Wave Sauna parked at Surfer’s End of Sachuest Beach — known as Second Beach to locals — and Newport Sauna stationed at Third Beach, both in Middletown. All three are operated by women who each came to appreciate the tradition differently.

Sibilia has been attracted to flames since she was a child. “My family always called me ‘fire starter,’” she says.

She was especially intrigued by a backyard sauna she helped her father prepare at their family home in Vermont. That sauna fit ten people and was built in the Finnish style. “I fell in love with the culture of it,” says Sibilia.

As a child, she recalls being invited into the sauna with her mother and aunt and listening to them tell stories; she became aware of how their tones changed in the heated and relaxed environment.

Now, as an adult, she knows that the body experiences a biochemical shift when immersed in such heat, and that the tonal changes she observed were an outward expression of an internal shift.

“Sauna is not a noun, it’s more of a verb, it’s an action,” Sibilia explains.

Some years later, she was living in San Francisco when a friend became ill and entered hospice. She needed time to recalibrate after that experience and returned home to Western Massachusetts, eventually renting a cottage in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, not too far from Little Compton. She wanted to be near the ocean so she could resume swimming and, on cold days, found herself using her car as a makeshift sauna.

Recalling how much she loved her family’s sauna in Vermont, she had the idea to create a sauna on wheels, something she could literally take with her to the beach. Sibilia researched sauna culture around the world, learning about practices in Sweden and Finland, discovering that some indigenous communities used to travel with their sweat-bathing structures, and encountering a mobile Sauna Village in Minnesota, which she eventually visited. “I found my people,” she says.

When it came time to construct her own sauna, Sibilia enlisted the help of artists and crafters in Rhode Island and the South Coast. About four years ago, she completed her first sauna, which she has since sold. The sauna that sits at South Shore Beach is her second, named Silky Sifaka, and fits five to six people. She’s currently working on a third, larger sauna that will accommodate eight to 10 people and be named Ginko.

“I really wanted to make it more accessible — and so people can use [the sauna] more consistently on a weekly basis,” she explains. “There’s a deep, deep reverence that happens when we’re sweating and plunging in nature.”

She recalls a sauna-goer remarking how the experience “made their entire body feel like a lung,” an analogy she loves.

Sibilia has installed a Kuma Stove, which she considers the best. They are made to order from American steel by a fourth-generation Finnish family in Idaho. On average, seven pieces of wood keep the fire burning for four to five hours.

She now lives in Warren, where she works as a craniosacral therapist among other healing modalities. Her sauna stays parked in Little Compton during the winter months and is at the beach Fridays through Mondays all season long, with a variety of booking options. Once she has two operational saunas, she plans to bring one to Warren Town Beach, hopefully sometime in early 2026.

The sauna experience, Sibilia believes, is a balm for loneliness and a place for connection. The intense heat makes everyone vulnerable in some way, which offers an equalizer of sorts. Sibilia knows of at least one couple that met during a Sauna Social. “We had a new love form,” she says, “they met at the ALTÆR, that’s the joke.”

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Over at Surfer’s End in Middletown, Small Wave Sauna can be found on Saturdays and Sundays. This sauna is owned and operated by Ellery Sparkman, who was inspired by a visit to Norway during college. That trip occurred during a semester abroad in Geneva, Switzerland, in the spring of 2023; she graduated in 2024.

A longtime surfer who grew up in Bristol, she says she was struck by how Europeans “were using the waterfront in interesting ways.” She knew from experience as a winter surfer that Rhode Islanders were already plunging during cold months and thought a mobile sauna would help some take their winter wellness to the next step.

Small Wave Sauna was built by North Country Creations, an Amish woodworking company based in Millis, Massachusetts. Sparkman wanted something that would fit about six people and be small enough to fit within a parking space. She also wanted the sauna to have big windows so guests could look out at the water. The final creation includes a tiny changing room.

“You can look out and see all the windmills — it’s a really beautiful spot,” Sparkman says of Surfer’s End.

She approached the Middletown Town Council with her idea in early 2025. Sparkman knew Sibilia had been doing something similar in Little Compton and noted her success while making her pitch. The council approved Sparkman’s plan, and she rolled her sauna into the Surfer’s End lot to much fanfare last February for the first time.

Her routine includes putting out a few chairs, a speaker, and creating an environment where people can relax. In general, she describes the sauna experience as hanging out in a “6-by-9- foot box with four other people.” Hers is also a wood-fired stove fueled by a few logs, and the internal temperature can get up to 220 degrees.

During the week, the sauna is parked nearby while Sparkman returns to Boston, where she works for a health tech company. She says she’s touched by the generosity and encouragement from people in Newport and Middletown.

“Everyone is so nice and supportive,” she says. “Shout-out to Kayla and Elena [at Newport Sauna] … all of us took a risk.” She emphasizes the collaborative nature of their enterprises, and how each sauna offers a way to enjoy the beach in the slow season.

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Elena Soini of Newport Sauna built her own structure, inspired by her grandparents and their Finnish roots. They were young when they left post-war Finland in the 1930s and met in the United States. Although they never shared too much of their personal histories (“Finns don’t really tell stories,” she says) “their influences instilled in me a deep respect for nature, craftsmanship, and community,” Soini notes.

She took up winter swimming about seven years ago. The only problem? She despises the cold. “The idea of going into the water without a sauna just wasn’t going to happen in my world,” she recalls. At the time, there weren’t any mobile saunas around, so she figured she’d build her own.

The Newport resident and lifelong woodworker found her motorcycle trailer to be the right size and shape for a sauna on wheels, at least conceptually. “I’ve been building things since I was little,” she says. A Coast Guard veteran and graduate of the IYRS School of Technology & Trades in Newport, she runs Finn Woodworking & Design.

Soini started with a solar-powered concept and went from there. “People thought I was nuts,” she says, recalling some folks asking why she wanted to build a mobile sauna.

“The answer, of course, is to get them out in nature where they belong,” she says.

Construction began in May 2024 and took about six months. “It was a labor of love,” she says, from conceptualizing the design to pulling together the time and resources needed to bring her sauna to life. And, because Sparkman had already petitioned the Middletown Town Council, getting the necessary permits was easy and well-supported.

Most weekends Soini takes the sauna to Third Beach, where she enjoys a dip in the cold water followed by some warmth. The sauna temperature ranges from 188 to 220 degrees. It is woodfired, like the others, and fits four or five people.

“I’ve had six rugby players all at one time, and they were fine,” she says about its size.

Like both Sibilia and Sparkman, Soini says many guests express reservations about actually going into the water. “People come all the time with a little bit of trepidation,” she says, “almost everybody tries it to some degree … although not everybody makes it all the way in.”

Still, most surprise themselves and enjoy a cool dip after time spent in the extreme heat. “There’s a bit of a novelty to it here,” Soini says of the winter sauna experience. “It’s a new shiny thing — for now.”

Visit a sauna

It’s best to book ahead for all three, where options range from Sauna Socials to private rentals. Prices at each location vary from $30-40 for an individual or public session to $120-180 for a private or group session.

For more information, visit ALTÆR Sauna at www.altaer.space/book-altaer, Small Wave Sauna at www.smallwavesauna.com, and Newport Sauna at www.newportsauna.com.