Boundary Waters, Trip Reports, BWCA, Stories

Peace and Solitude on a Snowbank Loop
by oldgentleman

Trip Type: Paddling Canoe
Entry Date: 09/14/2009
Entry & Exit Point: Snowbank Lake (EP 27)
Number of Days: 5
Group Size: 1
Part 4 of 6
In the morning the wind was still out of the east. I thought ”Oh hell, it'll probably blow in a cold rain.” I decided to head back to Disappointment. I had a non eventful trip back to Disappointment except that as soon as I was paddling south down the lake the wind veered around out of the south, just to make paddling harder and to rub it in that I'd wimped out when I should have gone on to Ima Lake. I paddled down to the south shore and camped at site 2085, the further east of the two on the south shore. It's a really pretty site with lots of large white pines. Also it's kind of off the main thoroughfare down the lake, so I didn't have a lot of canoes going by. I had camp set up early again and pressed the “I'm OK” button on the Spot. When coming back from paddling around picking up firewood I saw what looked like a mangled garter snake at the landing. Actually it turned out to be a garter snake trying to swallow a fairly large toad. He had the toad by one back leg. The toad figured if he puffed up enough the snake couldn't swallow him. Wrong choice. This was one time that passive resistance didn't work out. I grabbed my camera and took a picture. I sat back to watch. The snake showed remarkable persistence. It took him an hour and fifteen minutes but he finally swallowed the toad. I've seen pictures of snakes swallowing things bigger around than they are but it was nothing like watching the actual procedure. The snake kept taking tiny incremental holds and gradually got the toad all the way down. I took about 75 pictures.