Winter Wellness Retreat in Minnesota | Fuel Growth Summit

A good winter wellness retreat in Minnesota does not start with a spa menu. It starts with people willing to go outside when it is nine degrees and the lake is frozen solid, because that is where the reset actually happens.

On February 22, 2026, Let’s Fuel Growth ran its second Fuel Growth Summit, the Winter Summit, at Sauna Camps on Lake Minnetonka in Independence, Minnesota. It was built around one idea: midwinter in Minnesota is when people need community and movement the most, and when they get the least of both.

What does a winter wellness retreat in Minnesota actually include?

The Fuel Growth Winter Summit ran as one full day with four dimensions of growth: a guided snowshoe hike, contrast therapy, a shared meal, and mindset work. Nobody sat in a conference room all day. Every session asked people to move, breathe, or talk to someone they had not met yet, and the schedule ran from an 8:00 AM check-in through a fireside circle that lasted well past midnight.

A guided snowshoe hike through the Northwoods

The day opened with a snowshoe hike through the winter woods around Lake Minnetonka. It was never framed as a race. The point was presence: staying with the cold, the pace, and the group instead of checking out of the moment. For most attendees it was the first time in months they had been outside for a full hour with no phone in hand and nowhere else to be.

Sauna and cold plunge with Sauna Camps

Contrast therapy ran all day in partnership with Sauna Camps, the Lake Minnetonka property hosting the event: guided sauna sessions followed by a cold plunge, back and forth. Alternating heat and cold like this is a direct way to downshift a nervous system that has been running on low-grade winter stress for months, and the shared discomfort of the cold plunge did more to break the ice between strangers than any icebreaker exercise would have.

A Mediterranean wood-fired feast

Midday was a Mediterranean-inspired, wood-fired meal with real table time built in, not a boxed lunch eaten standing up. Several attendees said afterward that the meal was where the actual conversations happened, the ones that outlasted the scheduled sessions and carried into the afternoon workshops.

Mindset and resilience workshops

Interactive sessions in the afternoon focused on reframing a personal “Everest,” the challenge each person is actually carrying, and on how deliberately choosing discomfort (cold water, a hard hike, an honest conversation) builds a different kind of confidence than avoiding it does. These are not lecture-style talks. They run as small groups, so the exercise is as much about hearing someone else name their own mountain as it is about naming your own.

Reiki and a 45-minute sound bath

The day closed with an hour of reiki followed by a 45-minute sound bath, designed to integrate everything that came before it and bring people’s nervous systems all the way back down before the fireside circle. Pairing a high-exertion morning (the hike, the cold plunge) with a low-stimulation close is deliberate: it gives the body and the mind a full arc instead of ending on adrenaline.

Why does a cold, uncomfortable day work better than a spa day?

A spa day asks nothing of you. The Winter Summit asked people to be cold, tired, and a little exposed in front of strangers, and that is exactly what made the connection real. Shared discomfort compresses the time it takes two strangers to trust each other. A snowshoe hike at 15 degrees or a cold plunge next to someone you met twenty minutes ago gets past small talk fast, because nobody can perform through it.

Founder Ryan Rivard put it plainly after the event: “The biggest thing we can offer people is community. A place where you don’t have to feel alone, and you don’t have to pretend you’re okay when you’re not.” That is the design principle behind every Fuel Growth Summit, not just the winter one, and it is why the format stays the same from the August MN Mile to a quiet February day on a frozen lake: put people in a room (or a sauna, or a snowbank) with nothing to perform, and let the conversation do the rest.

Who is the Fuel Growth Summit built for?

The Winter Summit drew leaders, founders, athletes, creatives, caregivers and people carrying their own version of a hard climb, all in one room with no hierarchy between them. It is not a corporate offsite with a wellness theme bolted on, and it is not a clinical program. It is a day built around movement, mindset and honest conversation, open to anyone in the Twin Cities area ready to show up for it. Corporate teams have used a Fuel Growth Summit day the same way some companies use a traditional retreat, as a reset that actually changes how a team talks to each other afterward, without the trust-fall exercises.

How is this different from a corporate wellness retreat?

Most corporate wellness retreats in Minnesota are built around a hotel conference room with a yoga session bolted onto the agenda. The Fuel Growth format flips that: the agenda is the wellness, not a break from it. There is no breakout room with a projector. There is a trail, a sauna, a table, and a fire, and the mindset work happens inside those settings rather than between them. Teams that have joined a Summit day together report that the version of a colleague who sits across a cold plunge from you is a more honest one than the version who sits across a conference table, and that honesty is what a real reset requires.