I'll disagree somewhat and say 97 is alright as long as your cool side is cool. 97 will not burn your snake - I am sure you can put your hand in the hot side and touch the warmest part of the cage and leave it there for a few minutes without burning your hand. As long as the cool side is below 80, and the snake is actively seeking out the warm side, that sounds like you have things about right. Ball pythons don't NEED a 97 degree hot spot, and that does dry out the air, but if you're able to make it work...well, what works, works. However, there is the issue of the probe being closer to the heat pad than the snake can actually get, which makes the high temp inaccurate for what the snake can really experience.

Why not move the probe to above the carpet and see what the snake is actually living at? Seems a little unnecessarily to me to know the temperature of an area the snake isn't actually touching, y'know? Might as well see what temps are where the snake is at, if that's at all possible.

Since your hot side IS so warm, though, you'll probably be just fine to use nothing but heat pad(s) to heat the cage. Plug it in to a thermostat and you should be golden!

-Jen