Après-Ski Is Getting a Sauna Upgrade in America's Best Ski Town

North Conway, New Hampshire, has been named America's best ski town five times since 2016. It is the gateway to 12 alpine resorts, 335 trails, and 280 miles of groomed cross-country terrain. Over four million people visit the Mount Washington Valley every year. Until January 2026, there was not a single public sauna anywhere in the valley.

White Mountain Sauna Haus fixed that. Two traditional Finnish dry saunas, three cold plunge pools, a 1,000-square-foot outdoor deck with views of Cathedral Ledge, and a Nordic cafe, all inside a renovated 1890s barn at 3358 White Mountain Highway. Walk-in only. First come, first served. No phones allowed inside the hot rooms. It is hitting capacity almost every Saturday.

This is what happens when après-ski culture finally catches up to what the rest of the wellness industry already knows: people want to recover, not just drink.

Après-Ski Was Overdue for an Upgrade

For decades, après-ski in North Conway meant the same thing it meant in every other American ski town: loud bars, cheap beer, heavy pub food, and a hangover that ruins your second ski day. That formula worked when the ski market skewed frat-house and nobody talked about recovery. The market has changed.

The après-ski and nightlife segment is now the fastest-growing category in the mountain resort market, expanding at an 11.3% compound annual growth rate through 2033. The growth is not coming from bars. It is coming from thermal wellness, contrast therapy, and communal social spaces. Bathhouse in New York is approaching $120 million in run-rate revenue. Sauna House just landed on the Inc. 5000 with 276% two-year revenue growth. Othership raised $11.3 million to push into Manhattan.

But those are big-city plays. The real gap is in ski towns, where millions of visitors a year come to beat themselves up on the mountain and then have nowhere to recover except a hotel hot tub. White Mountain Sauna Haus is the first real attempt to fill that gap in one of the busiest ski corridors on the East Coast.

Walk In, Warm Up, No Hassle

The first thing you notice about White Mountain Sauna Haus is how approachable the whole experience is. Their website does not bury the basics behind lifestyle photography and vague wellness language. Hours, pricing, what to expect, how it works: it is all right there, written plainly. That matters in a category where a lot of social sauna brands make the experience feel exclusive or intimidating to newcomers. This one does not.

The on-site experience matches. You show up, pay $36, grab a towel and complimentary flip-flops, stash your phone in a cubby, and walk in. No reservations. No app. No booking system. Capacity is capped at 24 guests. When it fills, you wait. The average visit runs about 90 minutes, but there is no formal time limit. It is designed to feel like something you do on a whim after a ski day, not something you plan a week in advance.

That low barrier to entry is a deliberate choice by co-founders Levi Lucy and Bryce Harrison, two North Conway locals who renovated the barn and opened the doors in January 2026. The whole operation runs on the premise that if you make the experience easy and the price reasonable, ski tourists and locals will show up. They were right.

The Heat: Harvia 50 Wood-Burning

The facility runs two traditional Finnish dry saunas. The larger room holds up to 20 people; the smaller fits 12. Both run on tiered benches with temperatures between 175 and 205 degrees Fahrenheit. Water goes on stones. Steam fills the room.

The heater is a Harvia 50, the Finnish manufacturer's largest wood-burning stove: a 40 kW commercial unit holding 264 lbs of stones and sized by Harvia for sauna rooms between 706 and 1,766 cubic feet. That is not a token piece of equipment. The Harvia 50 is designated for professional use. Wood-fired heat, commercial stone load, real steam. The kind of sauna experience that Finnish visitors have told the owners feels legitimate.

Three cold plunge pools sit between 40 and 50 degrees. The 1,000-square-foot outdoor deck, with direct sightlines to Cathedral Ledge and White Horse Ledge, is where most of the socializing happens between rounds. Fire pit, mountain views, cold air on wet skin. It is a strong après-ski pitch.

The Faraday Cage

The vapor barrier that seals the sauna rooms from moisture also doubles as a Faraday cage, blocking cell phone, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth signals. Phones do not work inside the hot rooms. Not because of a sign on the wall, but because the laws of physics will not let them connect.

This was intentional. The effect is that guests enter a space where the only option is to talk to the person sitting next to you, or sit in silence. In a world where every wellness brand is begging customers to disconnect, White Mountain Sauna Haus made it a construction choice, not a policy choice. You cannot cheat. The building will not let you.

Pricing and the Ski-Town Math

Walk-in admission is $36. Punch cards sell at $154 for five visits and $286 for ten. Monthly unlimited is $199. They also run discounted weekly community sessions: Mellow Monday at $20, Funky Friday Nights at $25, and Locals Lazy Sunday at $20. Members get these free. Physical punch cards, never expire, shareable with friends. Old school.

Pricing snapshot: Walk-in: $36. Weekly community sessions: $20-$25. 5-punch card: $154 ($30.80/visit). 10-punch card: $286 ($28.60/visit). Unlimited monthly: $199.

That tiered structure, from $20 community nights to $199 unlimited, creates multiple entry points. Tourists pay the walk-in rate after a ski day. Locals convert to punch cards or memberships. The $199 unlimited gets as low as $10 per visit for heavy users, which is aggressive enough to build a daily habit.

The Nordic cafe adds a second revenue layer. Sauna stew bowls, salmon and egg toast, grilled cheese (co-founder Harrison runs a local restaurant chain called Cheese Louise and bakes the bread himself), Tuckerman's Pale Ale, Athletic Brewing non-alcoholic beer, Frontside Grind locally roasted coffee. The alcohol list exists but does not dominate. Recovery, not revelry.

Back-of-envelope math using the company's published hours (49 hours per week across five operating days), 90-minute average visits, 24-person capacity, and a blended admission yield around $27 to $30 per guest-visit suggests annualized venue revenue potential in the $650,000 to $750,000 range at moderate utilization, before cafe sales. That is not a disclosed figure. But it puts the business in the zone where a well-run independent sauna venue can sustain itself without outside capital.

Wired into the Mountain

The founders have not just opened a sauna and hoped the ski crowd would find it. They have systematically embedded the business into the Mount Washington Valley tourism infrastructure.

The Eastern Slope Inn Resort now actively promotes the Sauna Haus to its vacation ownership network and daily guests as a post-mountain recovery destination. During the 2025-2026 ski season, White Mountain Sauna Haus became an official stop on the Mt. Washington Valley cross-country ski touring network. Skiers literally ski to the barn along groomed trails.

They sponsor the Women's Uphill Bash and Chicks on Cliffs, offering sauna passes as prizes to skiers and hikers. For the 2026 Winter Fest, they brought a wood-fired sauna tent to Chocorua Lake for a cold-water dip. They have partnered with Visit NH for "mud season" restorative packages, which is how a seasonal business stays alive when the snow melts.

The campus itself helps. The barn sits next to The Local Grocer (a natural foods store) and Cathedral Ledge Distillery. Visitors are creating their own hybrid après routines: sweat at the Haus, grab a smoothie or local spirits next door. The location does half the marketing work.

A $1.6 Billion Winter Economy Had Zero Saunas

Here is the number that should surprise anyone in the industry: New Hampshire's winter tourism economy generates $1.6 billion in annual spending. The ski industry alone drives $384 million in direct and indirect visitor spending and supports 70,000 jobs statewide. Tourism is the state's second-largest revenue-generating industry. The Mount Washington Valley alone draws four million visitors a year.

And until three months ago, the thermal wellness infrastructure serving all of that was functionally zero. The only other public sauna in New Hampshire is Banya, in Portsmouth, nearly three hours southeast. The demand was already there, bundled into every lift ticket sold at Cranmore, Attitash, Wildcat, and Bretton Woods. White Mountain Sauna Haus just gave it somewhere to go. The same "destination first, bathing program second" logic is now showing up in more design-forward formats too, including floating concepts like Kōs in upstate New York.

The cold plunge market is at $380 million globally and growing at 8.1% annually. The global sauna equipment market hit $954 million in 2025 and is on pace for $1.6 billion by 2033. The thermal wellness infrastructure in American ski towns has not caught up to what those numbers represent. White Mountain Sauna Haus is early to what should become a wave.

Ski towns across the American West and Northeast sit on the same untapped opportunity. Millions of visitors a year who want to recover after a day on the mountain, and nowhere to do it besides a hotel hot tub or a noisy bar. The startup cost is not $3.8 million like a Sauna House franchise build-out. It is a barn, a Harvia 50, three cold plunges, a cafe, and the willingness to open your doors at 10 AM on a Saturday and let people walk in. North Conway's best ski town status just got a sauna to match. The rest of ski country should be taking notes.