February’s Public Sauna of the Month is a 3-for-1 special: ABR Trails.
Please welcome SaunaTimes Sauna Map correspondent Tom Carlson to the mix. Tom hit the trails and the sauna bench recently and has happily reported on this little gem of an authentic operation deep in the trails in UP Northern Michigan. Enter Tom:
As a Nordic ski center in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, ABR trails provides 95km of trails and 3 wood-fired saunas on-site. Rent a rustic cabin and book a time slot in the shared sauna near the trailhead or reserve one of the two lodging options that offers its own private sauna: the “semi-rustic” Everett’s cabin or Kartunen house, which has full utilities.
Skiing at ABR is amazing thanks to meticulous grooming and nearly 200 inches of lake-effect snow each year. Nothing follows a hard day on the trails like a good sweat. We hope they’ll soon re-open the 4th sauna, an electric hot room available to local skiers and those staying off-site but closed for now due to the pandemic. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this cluster of wonderful saunas is how unremarkable ABR finds them: you have to dig in the website to even learn they exist…but that’s just how it is in the UP, where saunas seem nearly as common as showers.
Look for the map pins on the Sauna Times public sauna map. As you scan along the Wisconsin-Michigan border in Ironwood, MI, you’ll find ABR Trails. And when you go, and toss some water on the rocks after your ski, be sure to tell them you heard about ABR from SaunaTimes!