Associated Press

A winter with much less snow than usual hasn't stopped dog sledding from enjoying a boom in Minnesota.

In fact, brown winters could actually be helping boost interest in dog sledding, since other popular winter pursuits like snowmobiling and skiing are languishing from lack of snow. The best conditions for mushing are passable trails, thick and smooth lake ice and just a thin layer of snow - much less than is needed for snowmobiling.

"If we had 60 more dogs, we'd be using them all this weekend," said Arleigh Jorgenson, a musher based in Grand Marais. Businesses like his are charging around $125 for a couple of hours behind the dogs.

That's attracting people like Alice Wagner, a 78-year-old Anoka woman who recently spent a couple hours behind a team of dogs, gliding across frozen lakes and bouncing over rocky portages.

"It was like riding a bucking bronco," Wagner said. "I would tell all senior citizens to choose dog sledding over a cruise any time."

In Ely, the gateway to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, the town's Web site gets more hits on its dogsledding page than in any other areas - more than 1,000 hits in January alone.

"We've been adding trips and still turning people away," said Paul Schurke, owner of Wintergreen, a mushing-for-amateurs operation in Ely.

Schurke estimated that business has close to double in the last couple years. The growth in the business reflects increased interest in so-called adventure trips like rock climbing and whitewater rafting, with mushing seen as a natural winter offshoot of such trips.

Snowmobiling used to be big business in Ely.

"Ten years ago, this lake would have been buzzing with snowmobiles," Schurke said. "Now snowmobile season lasts about a month. We can run dog sleds from December first through the end of March."

Now the local chamber of commerce boasts that Ely has "the most dog sled trip providers in the world."

About 20 commercial dogsledding guides operate in Minnesota, from Brainerd and Moorhead to Ely. Most are in the Arrowhead region, where higher elevations and lower temperatures mean more snow that lasts longer.

They're drawing customers from all over the world. Schurke said about half his business comes from the Upper Midwest, 30 percent from the rest of the country and 20 percent from other parts of the world including Israel, South America and Europe. Earlier this month an Australian couple celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary on a dog sledding trip, he said.

Dog sled entrepreneurs offer a wide variety of trips, from half-day rides to weeklong camping trips into the wilderness. It's not particularly cheap - a two-hour trip will cost $125, while two days of dog sledding with Wintergreen, including three nights of lodging and meals, is about $875 a person.