Sauna in the Parks opens for its fourth year on Friday, Oct. 23, at Shady Oak Beach. This season the City of Minnetonka is running two wood-fired saunas instead of one. The city's October 2026 Minnetonka Memo says the new sauna brings "twice the offerings, twice the cold plunges and twice the heat." Three winters ago this program was one sauna running for one week over the holidays. This season the beach at 5200 Shady Oak Road is set up for sauna sessions and cold plunges from October through April, which is most of the cold season.
From one week to most of the year
- Winter 2023. Minnetonka tested the idea with one Voyageur mobile sauna, a seven-person limit per session and an optional plunge into the lake. The city's pilot announcement set the run at Dec. 27 through Jan. 2.
- Fall 2024. After what the city called "rave reviews" from people in the pilot, recreation staff stretched the program to an October-through-April season. Sessions began Oct. 4 and ran Fridays through Sundays, with private group bookings added, according to the city's 2024 season announcement.
- November 2024. The Star Tribune put Shady Oak in its roundup of Minnesota lake-access saunas. The listing described one wood-fired sauna running until April at $25 a person.
- Fall 2026. The city now runs two saunas, named Horizon and Vista. A public session costs $28 per person, and the season again opens in October.
Measured against the 2023 pilot, this season has twice the saunas and a season dozens of times longer. The per-person price rose by $3. In the city's 2023 announcement, Recreation Program Manager Jesse Izquierdo said the goal was to help residents "embrace the north and build community."
The program also crosses city lines. The Sun Sailor described Sauna in the Parks as a joint Hopkins and Minnetonka initiative. Both cities publish their own facility pages for Shady Oak Beach, a recreation site the two share.
What one session includes
Each sauna has an IKI wood-fire stove, and an outdoor bonfire burns between rounds. The city describes the setup as having an "overall glamping ambiance." Registered guests can walk into the lake.
The plunge works in January because of a piece of equipment at the dock. The Hopkins facility page for Shady Oak Beach says an aerator near the floating dock keeps open water in and around the dock all winter. The same page warns about that open water, so the edge of the ice near the dock is not a place to walk.
The booking rules are short and strict:
- Sessions last 1 hour and 25 minutes.
- Public sessions hold seven or eight people. Private sessions hold up to 10.
- Public sessions cost $28 per person. A private group costs $280 for up to 10 people and is available at select hours on Saturdays and Sundays.
- Everyone must be 18 or older.
- Preregistration is required. To get a refund, cancel at least one week before your reservation.
The city says space is limited and fills fast. With the cancellation window at seven days, a booking is a week-ahead commitment, not a same-day decision.
The saunas come from Voyageur Custom Saunas, a Minnesota builder of residential and commercial saunas. A 2025 trade-partner profile says Eric Bongard founded the company in 2017 after adapting icehouse and trailer technology to build mobile saunas. The ice-fishing roots explain why these saunas can sit on a beach through a Minnesota winter.
Fall hours and winter hours are different schedules
The city publishes two timetables. The fall schedule runs from opening day through Nov. 15. The winter schedule starts Nov. 18 and adds weekdays.
Fall, Oct. 23 to Nov. 15 | Winter, from Nov. 18 | |
|---|---|---|
Wednesday and Thursday | No sessions | Public sessions from 4:30 p.m. |
Friday | Public sessions from 4:30 p.m. | Public sessions from 3 p.m. |
Saturday | Public from 11:15 a.m., private blocks in the afternoon and evening | Public from 9:45 a.m., private blocks in the afternoon and evening |
Sunday | Public from 11:15 a.m., private blocks in the afternoon and evening | Public from 11:15 a.m., private blocks in the afternoon and evening |
Last fall session | 6:45 to 8:10 p.m. in Vista | Winter hours take over |
Every weekend under both schedules, private groups get the Horizon sauna at 1:30, 3, 4:30 and 6 p.m. Those times are public on Vista. So a group of up to 10 can book Horizon to itself while the public uses Vista next to it. With one sauna, the city could not do that.
The winter schedule also adds holiday hours on Dec. 23, 28, 29, 30 and 31 and on Jan. 1. Those dates overlap almost exactly with the Dec. 27 through Jan. 2 window the 2023 pilot used. In 2023 that week was the whole program. This year it is a block of extra hours in a season that opened two months earlier.
The same week, the rest of the city switches seasons
The sauna opening is not the only thing changing over in late October. Several of Minnetonka's cold-season staples start within days of each other.
Wednesday, Oct. 21. Shake Shack opens at 1809 Plymouth Road near Ridgedale. The Excelsior–Lake Minnetonka Chamber has a ribbon-cutting set for 9:30 a.m., and doors open at 10. It is next door to the Chipotle at 1807 Plymouth Road, which Bring Me The News reported opened in late July. Hoodline's report on the Chipotle opening describes the site as a Wells Fargo redevelopment with two new buildings and five commercial tenant spaces.
Friday, Oct. 23. The saunas open at Shady Oak. The same day, Minnetonka Center for the Arts opens its free Arts of the Holidays Show & Sale, with work from more than 100 local artists. The show runs through Dec. 19, Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The sale is open in the daytime and the Friday sauna sessions start at 4:30 p.m., so the two fit into the same day.
Friday, Oct. 30. The free Burwell Spooktacular runs from 5 to 7:30 p.m. at 13209 E. McGinty Road. It has games, crafts, performers, a fire department inflatable, food vendors and tours. Free parking is at St. David's Family Center, 3395 Plymouth Road.
For something sweet after a cold plunge, Ichigo Cafe opened on Oct. 1 at 10988 Cedar Lake Road South. It serves Tokyo-style crepes and Japanese sweets and is the second location for the shop at Minneapolis's Eat Street Crossing, according to the Star Tribune's restaurant roll call.
When snow arrives, the parks split two ways
The saunas sit on top of park winter routines that are already in place. The two big nature parks are handled differently after a snowfall. Purgatory Park's trails are plowed after two inches or more of snow, so they stay walkable. Lone Lake's winter trails are left unplowed on purpose so people can snowshoe them. Between the two parks and the beach, you can walk, snowshoe or plunge, depending on the day.
Two winter regulars have no dates yet. The city's outdoor rinks page still describes the 2025–26 season and gives no opening date for 2026–27. Light up the Commons is listed as a December event on the city's community events page, but the page still links to the 2025 edition. That event was held Dec. 6, 2025, from 4:45 to 6 p.m. at Ridgedale Commons, 12590 Ridgedale Drive. It had park lighting, a glow-stick and candy hunt, a DJ, cocoa, a food truck, a fire performer and crafts. The city calendar for November and December 2026 has no listing for it yet.
So for now, the saunas are the cold-season program with a fixed calendar, two saunas and published hours through New Year's Day. Registration is open at minnetonkamn.gov/saunaintheparks.
A seven-month season at the beach shows how much Minnetonka's lake amenities now matter in winter. That lasting appeal is the kind of detail Tonia Kurth and the BOOST Real Estate Group team track across the western suburbs. If a move is on your calendar for this winter or next spring, schedule a Real Estate Strategy Call. We'll walk through your timeline, your options and the next steps.
