A sauna at a wilderness lodge is a different object from a sauna in a gym. It sits at the edge of the water or the edge of the snow, the plunge is whatever is outside the door, and the good ones are built so that you can see it coming. The two I have photographed most, at Knight Inlet and at Orca Camp, both have a panoramic window on one side, facing the view. You sit in the heat and watch the inlet, or the strait, until it is time.

Two cedar barrel saunas with round glass doors on the lodge's floating dock, open to the water
Knight Inlet's two cedar barrel saunas on the floating dock. The round glass doors face the water; the plunge is the inlet.

Two cedar barrels on a floating dock, and the cold plunge is the inlet itself. There is no plumbing involved and no way to make it gentler.

Knight Inlet: two barrels on the dock

The saunas at Knight Inlet Lodge are two cedar barrels on the floating dock, glass doors and a panoramic window on the water side, so the view from the bench is the cove and the rainforest wall behind it. The plunge is the inlet, which the lodge puts at 9 to 20°C in summer. After a day on a skiff rail with a long lens, it is the best thing on the property that is not a bear.

A hand ladling water onto the sauna stove's rocks, the inlet bright through the window behind

Water on the rocks

The ritual is the same on a floating dock as anywhere else: a ladle, a bucket, the hiss, and the minute after it when nobody talks. What is different is what is on the other side of the glass.

At Knight Inlet that is the cove, the boats, and the rainforest wall going gold in the last light. The stove sits under the window on purpose.

Inside the barrel sauna at dusk, the stove and bench in silhouette against the round window and the pink inlet beyond
The floating dock at Knight Inlet Lodge at dusk, the sauna's timber posts and the still inlet reflecting the last light
View through the sauna porthole out to Johnstone Strait
Through the sauna window at Orca Camp, out to Johnstone Strait.
Orca Camp lit at dusk, with the wood-fired hot tub and sauna glowing among the trees
Guests in the wood-fired hot tub at sunset on the bluff above the beach

The evening, from the smoke going up

By the second night at Orca Camp you notice when the smoke goes up from the stove, because it means the heat is an hour away. The camp at dusk is the tub and the sauna glowing among the trees.

The tub sits on the bluff above the beach, and the sunset over the strait is the view from the water line. It is the part of the day the packing list calls the plunge after the sauna, and the reason the swim shorts are on it.

The others

Sointula Lodge has a cedar sauna and hot tubs by the water, a fifteen-minute boat ride from Port McNeill. Mistaya Lodge has a sauna at 2,040 metres, for what the glaciated ground does to you. Lightwater Cove has a hot tub, a sauna and a spa with massage and facials booked separately. Spirit of the West has no sauna but a cedar hot tub under a timber shelter at the water's edge, looking across the channel. And Berry Island Lodge skips the heat entirely and goes straight to the plunge: the 5 pm swim club, with a warm towel waiting.

The cedar sauna interior with a curved wooden bench and hooks on the wall Cedar hot tub under a timber shelter at the water's edge, looking across the channel to distant mountains Guests in the wood-fired hot tub among the trees
Sointula's cedar sauna, the hot tub at Spirit of the West's base camp at the water's edge, and Orca Camp's tub among the trees.

If you want one at home

Looking out through the barrel sauna's round window from inside: the stove, the bucket, the dock and the inlet in daylight
The shape to buy: a barrel, a stove under the window, and the window facing the water.

The lodge saunas are built like the barrels on the Knight Inlet dock: cedar, small, fast to heat, with the door or a window facing whatever there is to look at. That shape is the one to buy. I do not know who built the lodges' saunas; when I find out, this page will say so, and it will say where to get one.