Sweet Full-face Rocker 

by Ed Gaker 

"Because I have been mostly creeking since I have lived in Morgantown, I started thinking about getting a new helmet. My sweet strutter is super comfortable and a great helmet for my summer days on the Yough, I began feeling like a bit more protection on the other commonly run creeks up north might be nice. Bernie told me about sweet’s new fullface rocker and got one ordered just in time for me to test it out west. First of all, chin bars concern people because they can catch on trees or rocks. However, the Rocker’s chin bar is removable. However, it is not detachable: once the bar comes off, it becomes just a regular Rocker. The amount of force that detaching the facemask would take would have to be incredible, though. Overall, the padding on the inside is about 2.5 centimeters thick and can be compared to the old Wildwasser helmets. Hits are really well absorbed in the foam and the outer Kevlar/carbon layer. Communicating with these things is a bit difficult. The chin bar echoes sound back into the helmet. They did put a mesh opening in the middle of the facemask, but I didn’t notice it to be very effective. Overall, I would have to say that this is simply par for the course for wearing a fullface helmet. Just talk when you get into an eddy, I guess. The only real negative is the price. However, I think that if this helmet deflects a single hit to the face, it would pay for itself 10 times over."