FEATURE
I despise cold, overcast days, but peeping out at gray San Luis Obispo farmland through the half-moon window of California Sauna Club’s heated barrel trailer softened the gloom.
The experience, tucked behind Froom Ranch Way marketplace, is from the minds and hands of couple Darren and Arielle Leva.
The former Bay Area residents opened California Sauna Club in March 2025 after missing the Dolphin Club where people swim in the San Francisco Bay without a wetsuit and heat up in a sauna after.
“I really needed a sauna, and so I started looking around and figuring out if I could put a sauna on a trailer,” Darren, a biotech professional, said. “I figured out that people had been doing this in the Midwest, building these kinds of things. I had the idea, and then got a little bit too busy with my day job. It took about four years for us to actually do it.”
The Levas ordered a steel-cradled, wooden mobile sauna from a Midwestern company called Nomad. Darren towed it from Minneapolis to California. The Nomad sauna now shuttles between the SLO location and Morro Bay’s Coleman Park every week.
Sweat sessions cost $30 and last an hour, but no one stays in the sauna trailer for the entire 60 minutes. California Sauna Club’s temperature soars up to 190 degrees Fahrenheit.
“You’re usually staying in the sauna for about 10 to 15 minutes, depending on your body and how comfortable you are and how much you sauna,” Darren said. “When you’re in that kind of temperature and you’re sweating, you typically want to cool off.”
I arrived at the sauna club in SLO with a bathing suit, flip-flops, a water bottle, and two towels. Before stepping in, Darren advised me to stay clear of the stove that heats igneous rocks, which steam up once hit with water.
“Drink more water than you think you’d need after,” he said before grabbing the sauna trailer’s antler doorknob and opening the door.
The billowing heat enveloped me. The interior, covered floor to ceiling in wood, fits eight people and two were already in the middle of a sauna session.
Credit: PHOTO COURTESY OF CALIFORNIA SAUNA CLUB
I took a deep breath. The heat stung my nostrils, and I quickly started breathing through my mouth. Better.
Beads of sweat had already formed all over me.
A temperature dial on the trailer wall displayed a needle inching toward 190 degrees Fahrenheit, and the humidity percentage was well past 70.
“It’s the humidity that gets you, not the heat,” I thought, remembering a familiar cliché.
Still, it was oddly comforting to be slicked in sweat in a cabin with strangers while looking out the sauna’s window at the chilly mountains and hoophouses.
“There’s this community aspect where people are meeting new people, and they’re exchanging numbers and finding babysitters,” Darren said. “All sorts of connections happen in the sauna. It’s really a third space that is unique and doesn’t involve alcohol. It’s very healthy.”
Conversations during my sauna session ebbed and flowed as more people entered and left the trailer over the hour.
They wove a tapestry of dialogue: Kiko’s Peruvian Kitchen in downtown SLO; the perks of Restaurant Month; life in small town Mystic, Connecticut; the benefits of wearing earplugs while swimming in cold water, and how sauna caps help keep heads cool.
Heat up, cool down
Book a sauna session with California Sauna Club at californiasauna.club/book-a-class. The sauna trailer is fixed at 865 Froom Ranch Way in SLO from Tuesday through Thursday, and at Coleman Park in Morro Bay from Friday through Sunday. Follow the club on Instagram @california_sauna_club.
“I’ve put ice cubes under my hat, and they were still there after,” one man announced to the group from under a burnt orange bell-shaped sauna hat.
Orange sand in the trailer’s wooden timer had trickled down to mark 15 minutes. I was ready to chill.
Darren and I stepped out of the trailer into the refreshing cold air. Two steel tubs were filled with clear water as cold as 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
Most beginners gingerly get in, a limb or two at a time. Darren jumped straight in, submerging his head for a few seconds. I decided to rip off the Band-Aid too.
I felt pinpricks all over my body. Goosebumps covered my skin, but after a few seconds, I felt energized.
Most people go through three cycles of switching between the sauna heat and the cold plunge. The frequent temperature flux is healthy, according to Darren, helping alleviate pain and inflammation.
“It’s funny, people sometimes call it the executive workout, because if you don’t have a lot of time and you can go,” he said. “You’re relaxing, but also working out, because … you’re getting all the heart rate benefits of exercise. You’re not getting the muscle benefits necessarily … and of course, there are mental health benefits.”
For California Sauna Club-goers in Morro Bay, open waters at Coleman Beach replace the cold-plunge tubs.
The Levas’ goal for 2026 is to set up a second, larger sauna trailer that’ll be fixed at the Morro Bay location.
“What’s great about Morro Bay is some of the cleanest water on all the California coast, even in a rain event,” Darren said. “It’s a really great place to cold plunge that’s safe.”
By the end of the hour, I stepped out of the sauna one last time. If I wanted to be relaxed, I should just dry off and cool down gradually, Darren told me. If I wanted all the energy I could get, step into the cold tub.
Work deadlines loomed. I took the plunge.
This article appears in Get Outside – Winter/Spring 2026.