ice therapy: heating up in las vegas

I can remember going to a club called “Beyond” on Tuesday nights. They played hip-hop. Boy howdy, did that place like to suck. Still, it did have two great features. First, the drop dead gorgeous Natasha, a bartender/hostess whom I had a huge, dorky crush on for years (and by ‘for years’, read: ’still do’).

Secondly, it had an ice room. It was literally a sealed refrigerator like room with a bar and shot glasses made out of ice. Not a bad way to enjoy vodka shots after sweating away on the dancefloor.

Las Vegas spas are taking the idea one step further.

Enter Qua @ Caesar’s Palace, and the first “Ice Room” on the strip.

Qua’s ice room, the only one of its kind in the United States, comes from the millennia-old European bathing tradition of using snow to cleanse the body, said Don Genders, a partner of Eurospa Technologies LLC, the room’s creator. Ice is available in the room for those who want to rub it on steaming skin.

“They built these wooden cabins, heated them up with logs and rocks and would sit in them to sweat to actually cleanse their skin,” Genders said.

“The whole idea was that you’d get too hot sitting in the little cabin and you’d use the snow on the ground to wipe your body. That process of wiping the dirty sweat off your body with snow gets you cold again. So you go back in.”

Although the debut ice room @ Qua bottoms out at a relatively ‘balmy’ 55 degrees, other Vegas spas in the works will chill guests at 32 degrees and feature real snow (rather than the simulated variety Qua dishes out).

I imagine being mighty refreshed with snow falling on my head after some time in the sauna.

Read all about it here