Hiking Calorie Calculator

A 70 kg hiker on cross country trail burns about 441 kcal an hour, so a four-hour day out is around 1,760 kcal before the pack goes on. Put 10 kg in the pack and hold a 6 to 10 percent climb and the hourly figure is closer to 590. The calculator above gives the base number for any weight and duration; this page is about the two things that move it most, weight on your back and the angle of the ground.

Hiking calorie calculator: calories per hour on the trail

Those are the Compendium of Physical Activities rows, codes 17190, 17200, 17034, 17080 and 17035. Cross country hiking at 6.0 MET already assumes rougher footing and some up and down, which is why it sits above brisk road walking at the same sort of pace.

By day length, cross country hiking, no pack:

The formula

kcal per minute = MET x 3.5 x body weight in kg / 200

For 70 kg on cross country trail: 6.0 x 3.5 x 70 / 200 = 7.35 kcal per minute, 441 an hour. To add a pack, add its mass to your body weight before you run the sum, which is what the next section explains.

What the pack adds

For moderate loads carried close to the trunk, the energy cost of walking rises roughly in proportion to the total mass being moved, body plus load, and that proportional rule is the assumption behind the load-carriage equations the military has used for decades. It gives you a clean way to use the calculator: enter body weight plus pack weight in the weight box.

These rows are the scaling rule applied to the cross country value, not separate Compendium entries. The rule holds well up to about a quarter of body weight. Beyond that the cost climbs faster than the mass does, because posture changes, stride shortens and the legs start working against the load rather than with it, and a 25 kg pack on a 70 kg body should be read as more than the 36 percent the table would predict.

What the grade adds

Gradient moves the number more than the pack does. The Compendium's own values run from 3.8 MET for level moderate walking to 5.3 on a 1 to 5 percent grade and 7.0 on 6 to 10 percent, so a steady climb at the top of that band costs 84 percent more per hour than the same walk on the flat. Per kilometre the difference is bigger still, since you cover less ground per hour uphill. Stack the two effects and the arithmetic is plain: 70 kg hiker, 10 kg pack, 6 to 10 percent grade, 7.0 x 3.5 x 80 / 200 = 9.8 kcal per minute, 588 an hour, against 279 for an unloaded stroll on the level. More than double.

Downhill gives some of it back, but not all. Most evidence puts the cheapest walking at a gentle descent, somewhere around minus 10 percent, after which the braking work climbs and a steep descent can cost as much as flat ground while wrecking your quads on top. A mountain day is therefore not "up costs, down is free". It is up costs a lot, down costs something, and the total across the loop usually lands 30 to 50 percent above the same distance on a flat trail.

Footing matters too. The terrain factors in load-carriage models put loose sand at up to nearly double the cost of a hard path, and deep snow higher again. Cold and heat both add a little, altitude a little more. None of it is in the table.

The table is an average and you are not

Everything above describes an average person of that mass on that grade, and the 3.5 ml/kg/min resting rate the formula multiplies is itself an average that runs high for many heavier and older adults. Two hikers of the same weight on the same climb can differ by 10 to 15 percent in oxygen cost through fitness and economy alone. Your watch is estimating too, from heart rate, and wrist devices have missed energy expenditure by a quarter or more in independent tests. Plan food for a long day from the band, not the point, and carry a margin.

The figure is gross. It includes the roughly 1 MET you would have burned sitting in the car park for the same hours, which over a six-hour day at 70 kg is about 440 kcal of the 2,646. The calories burned calculator explains gross against net, and the MET calculator lists every value in the set.

Using the number

A big trail day is one of the few times the calorie estimate matters in the other direction: under-eat a 2,500 kcal hike and you feel it at hour five. For multi-day trips, pack food to the loaded, graded figure with 10 to 20 percent on top. For a training week, count the hike as load and put it against your TDEE; a long hike can cover a whole day's calorie deficit on its own. Road and treadmill equivalents live at the walking calorie calculator and the treadmill calorie calculator, where the incline arithmetic is written out.

How Movement Rebels fits

If you record the hike on a Garmin watch or with an iPhone, the coach in Movement Rebels reads the activity when it syncs, with duration, distance and average heart rate, and counts it as training load when it plans the week. A six-hour mountain day before a hard interval session is something the coach can see and will plan around. It reads the session as you did it, not as a table row.

The coach does not see your food. Rebel Fuel is your own log and none of it reaches the coach, so it cannot tell you whether you ate enough on the trail or compare intake with expenditure. Write your nutrition context in the notes for your coach and it will treat a rising resting heart rate or a falling HRV as a fuelling signal. For how to eat when the goal is less fat and more muscle at the same time, read Body Recomposition Nutrition Strategy.

MET values used here

Every value below is quoted from the Compendium of Physical Activities with its activity code, so you can look up the entry yourself. One MET is the oxygen cost of sitting quietly, about 3.5 ml of oxygen per kg per minute.

Walking and hiking

Treadmill walking

Running

Curved (non-motorised) treadmill running

Cycling

Stationary cycling

Rowing machine

Swimming

Strength and gym

Source: Compendium of Physical Activities (Ainsworth et al.), pacompendium.com. Codes are the Compendium's own.

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