Generating hard puzzles for a backtracking snake

Question

Let $M$ be a matrix of height $h$ and width $w$. Each entry of $M$ is an integer.

There is a snake that starts from the "left side" of $M$, and its goal is to reach the "right side" of $M$. To get from one side to the other, i.e. to move from column $c$ to column $c+1$, the snake must choose an integer from both. Whatever the snake picks from column $c$, it can never pick the same integer again in $c+1$, nor from any column that appears later.

For example, suppose each entry in column 1 has integer 1, each entry in column 2 has integer 2, and so on. Now the snake can move very freely: in fact, we have $h$ choices in each of the $w$ columns. Even a blind snake gets through the matrix easily.

The goal is to generate matrices that are difficult for a snake that performs some kind of exhaustive backtracking search. The matrices can be tall, but preferably not wide. Can we assign the integers to $M$ such that there is exactly one (i.e. a unique) path through it? The hope is matrices with unique valid paths through them are difficult for a backtracking snake.