Bywater, a mobile sauna and cold plunge experience that’s quickly becoming a Seattle social hub, will be part of the lakeside neighborhood into spring.
“I’ve been going in the water since like 2020, and I was going alone for a couple years,” Garberich tells CHS. What changed everything was community. He started the Cold Water Collective, a meetup group that transformed solitary winter dips into group experiences, complete with potlucks and bonfires.
Laura Lennon joined the team shortly after its inception, and together, they launched Bywater through a Kickstarter campaign in 2024, opening their first mobile sauna at Golden Gardens and Alki beaches. Now, with three saunas operating across the city, the pair has expanded to a residency at Leschi on Lake Washington, at least through April.
Besides its portability, what sets Bywater apart from typical spa experiences is the conversation that heat and cold creates. Lennon describes the atmosphere inside their saunas as notably different from other spaces.
“Usually skew a bit more chatty than like a typical spa environment,” Lennon said of the Bywater experience. “We try to say like inside voices, but definitely encourage community and sharing.”
“When you’re in the sauna, there’s nothing to do besides just hang out and talk,” Garberich said. “The heat brings that out of you, actually, it relaxes you in a way that’s really casual. And something that I think is not easy to find in Seattle is that casual camaraderie.”
“We do get a lot of people that become friends because they come to the same session all the time,” he said.
The benefits can extend beyond the physiological. Elizabeth, a daily cold plunger, describes the practice as a form of nervous system training that has reshaped how she navigates life’s stresses.
“It regulates my nervous system quite a bit, and it also makes me feel like I have more capacity to handle life when it gets stressful,” Elizabeth said. She explained that by practicing staying calm during the body’s natural fight-or-flight response to cold water, she’s building skills that transfer to everyday challenges.
“If you can stay in your prefrontal cortex and your fight, fight, or flees right that part, then you can have a relationship with it, which then builds our capacity,” Elizabeth said.
V, another regular user, brought up their Finnish heritage — “This is an important way to stay more connected to my roots.
For Garberich, the practice became a lifeline during Seattle’s isolating winters. “There are times in the Seattle winter when I’m lonely,” he said. The sauna became an antidote to solitude.
The Leschi location also represents a homecoming, of sorts, for Garberich, who grew up in northeast Seattle frequenting Magnuson Park. Lennon said the expansion to Lake Washington has been driven by community demand.
“We’ve had a ton of people over the past, since we started a year and a half ago, reaching out about Lake Washington opportunities, kind of clamoring for it,” Lennon said.
The team set up the propane-powered sauna with views of Mount Rainier and outfitted the space with loungers and a boathouse where visitors can store belongings. Unlike their pop-up locations at Sound-side beaches, the Leschi residency allows for a more developed experience.
Drop-in sessions cost around $40 depending on length, with membership options available for regular users. Visitors should bring their own towels, wear non-flip-flop shoes for dock safety, and remove glasses and jewelry due to the heat. The team suggests parking at the nearby public lot.
Bywater hopes to be part of the lake community in Leschi into April with a schedule of weekend and some weekday openings. Demand looks solid with the new year underway with 16 of 16 slots Sunday filled as swimmers get off to a good start on their 2026 resolutions.
You can find Bywater Sauna dockside on Lake Washington behind BluWater Bistro off Lakeside Ave. Learn more at bywatersauna.com.
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