Souris River Woven Color Green

All layups of Souris River Canoes have one sheet of cloth in them that they call Flexlite besides the other main cloths. Flexlite when teamed up with their epoxy resin is some sort of cloth that makes Souris River's Kevlar, Carbon Tec and Duralite canoes substantially stronger than the average kevlar canoe out there today. All the details are top secret so don't ask for them. We could tell you, but then we'd have to ship you to Siberia. It just so happens that this particular cloth accepts most dyes quite well and Souris River keeps experimenting with different colors. So far, despite what you read in any brochure or on the net, they have three main colors. Red, Green and Burgundy. They used to have a dark, spruce green which was a beautiful color. However, the process to dye the cloth fibers and then weave them into a usable cloth was incredibly different with this particular dye. I'm still not entirely sure why that is the case - it just is. All I know is that they ended up wasting a LOT of cloth trying to get a good, solid color going and the weaver (not Souris River) said "That's it", and discontinued the color. No matter how hard you whine, complain, gripe, and send emails to the factory, that spruce green color is no longer available. Might it come back? I don't know, but I wouldn't hold my breath and wait for that color to come back if actually paddling a canoe is my primary goal as I would expect it to be. Now, if sitting in in a lawn chair out in your garage staring at your hanging canoe with dreamy eyes is more important to you, then you should hold your breath. The rest of us are going fishing.

As for the new green, it's a bit lighter in color than the old green. When you see it by itself, it's a very nice green. It's not obnoxious or too loud and it looks absolutely great on the water. If looking great to passersby (to brighten their day) is why you exist, this color will do it. Remember that all you can see inside of your canoe is the butterscotch color of kevlar along with the seats and gunwales regardless of the color on the outside. If you are able to see the outside of your canoe while you are on the water, I'm guessing that you are now actually IN the water and your canoe is floating like a bloated walrus alongside of you. Way less fun this way and I would guess that the color that was so important when you bought the canoe has less meaning right now.

	These are brand new Quetico 17's. At the top is a Red Tiger, then two Carbon Tec's and a Green tiger on the bottom.

Anyway, here are pictures of the colors that we actually have in stock. We don't carry burgundy as a rule but we can special order it. Burgundy Woven Colors are beautiful canoes and a few years back we stocked a whole bunch of them. Customers would come up to the canoe and slide their hand over that dark, bing cherry color and admire the rich deep hues of burgundy as it shimmered in the sun. Then, after exclaiming how beautiful and gorgeous it was, they would take home the green Quetico 17 right next to it. We had a pile of burgundies laying around and finally moved them out on super clearance. So after doing this exact same thing with Old Towns severak years ago, we finally actually learned with a trailor load of burgundy Souris Rivers. Everybody enjoys looking at burgundy.

This is the same canoe photographed in the same five-minute time frame. In sunlight, it appears lighter in tone when the sun shines thru the inside of the hull. The yellow tone of the kevlar brightens the green. When the clouds come out, it looks a bit darker. On a beach surrounded by mundane butterscotch-colored Wenonahs, Bells and Mad Rivers, it stands out beautifully.

In Clouds	In Sunlight

The little black stripes that you see in the lighter patch is made because this canoe is a Le Tigre kevlar canoe with a Woven Color overlay. Turns out that the little black strips from the Le Tigre "mute down" the green making it appear slightly darker to the naked eye. We call it a Green Tiger or a Red Tiger. Burgundy Tigers don't exist ordinarily because it's hard to see the black stripes in that dark burgundy color.

So there you have it. Want to know what a non-Green/Red Tiger looks like? Look between the black stripes.


Red Tigers are the same as Green Tigers except of course for the color. My digital camera has a difficult time with red and stripes are hard to see in the right photo. They are fairly distinctive to the naked eye. Red Tigers are very striking canoes and the red is deeper/richer in tone.