Ah, the Snake...still my favorite river trip an hour north of the Twin Cities.  The Snake River section I paddle begins at the Cross Lake Dam in Pine City and ends where the Snake flows into the St Croix.  This time we tried a different approach for the shuttle.  Tom, one of those nutzo marathon runners (hmmm 3:xx for Grandma's marathon...!!?) volunteered to drive the van to the end, take out a bicycle, and pedal back 12 miles to the start point.  There's one long hill to deal with, and that day there was a good 10mph+ wind working against him.  However. I wanted to get a head start on the latest John Sanford book and at 8:45, Tom drove away.

I took my time getting the boats setup.  I realized I don't have any good pictures of the Sunny and snapped my first picture.


Soon after, a group of fellas with fishing 'cats' set off for a nice day of fishing.  They take these boats down and as they find their fishing spots, drop the anchor.  The catamaran design looks good for fishing, I saw one gentleman standing up in his to cast.  


Here they are setting off downstream...


Today, the Snake was moving at average flow, about 600CFS as measured at the Cross Lake dam.  I thought it was a fun trip, but 900CFS+ makes for a more enteraining, wavy trip.


Soon after the cats took off. I began to wonder what happened to Tom as we were approaching an hour.  I had told Tom that we could try the bike shuttle if he thought he could pull it off in an hour or less.  Several cars of paddlers came and went, I asked if they saw a guy on a bike, and they all nodded that they had, "not much further down the road".


Tom came rolling in and stuck his watch in my face: "59:30:14".  Not to be beat by the clock, he came in right on time.  A few minutes later some guys rolled in with a peculiar looking canoe.  It was a 'homemade' birchbark canoe.  One of the guys said he made it from 150 year old plans and they had taken it out one other time.  The Snake was a bit rockier than they might have bargained for, and their bailing cups got a workout.


Regardless, these guys made pretty good time.  The gentleman who made the canoe also built an airplane (!).

We didn't see much wildlife on this trip.  A crane here and there, that's all.


I did have a run in with some critters in the water.  The Sunny's low sides took in a lot of water; we must have pulled over to dump the boat 4 times.  While standing in some rocks by the shoreline, I looked down and saw this crayfish.  I watched him for awhile, but as Tom began getting back in the kayak I saw half a dozen or more crayfish zooming around my feet, ouch!


All in all it was a beautiful day with excellent weather.  We moved through the water well and I took breaks frequently to just float along.  Later on, we ran into the birchbark canoe guys again and stopped for a cold drink and some conversation.


Here's some pictures I took while waiting for Tom to ride his bike up highway 8:


On my last trip, the water was rough enough that I didn't have time for much in the way of pictures of the water.  This time, there were some nice bubbly Class I spots that I managed to capture.  I remember fast, higher, stretches of this on a previous 800+ CFS trip.


Here's marathon man:


I'd really like to try the Snake again this year if the water levels ever get up to a reasonable flow again (not likely)....

Kayaks Used:
Innova Sunny

Trip Data
Left: 730ish
Arrive at Putin: 8:45
Tom arrived via bike from takeout: 10:00
On the water: 10:15
Out of the Water 2:05.