Hiking Calorie Calculator: What Your Hike Burns

A 160 lb hiker on a 6-mile trail with 1,200 ft of climb burns about 1,130 calories: the Compendium of Physical Activities puts hiking at 6.0 METs, and Naismith’s rule gives the trail 2 h 36 min. About 940 of them are the hike’s own, above what you burn sitting still. Change the weight, the kind of hike or the time to see yours.

How to use it

Type your weight, then choose the hike: a whole hike at a pace, with a day pack or backpacking, or only a climb or a descent. Type the time on the trail (3:30, 3.5 or 3 all work) or leave it empty and give the trail’s distance and elevation gain: the time is then Naismith’s, as the Hiking Time Calculator works it out. The answer is the calories for the whole time, per hour and per mile, how many are above sitting still, and the same time at the other paces. Switch to kilograms and kilometres and what you typed is converted. Copy the link to keep the result.

Where the numbers come from

The Compendium of Physical Activities is the researchers’ list of what activities cost, in METs. Its 2024 edition (Herrmann, Willis, Ainsworth and colleagues, Journal of Sport and Health Science) defines the unit: “One MET is defined as 1 kcal/kg/hour and is roughly equivalent to the energy cost of sitting quietly.” So a hike’s calories are its MET × your weight in kilograms × the hours. Its Walking chapter has the hiking rows: 17081 “Hiking slowly or ambling through fields and hillsides, no load” is 3.8 METs, 17082 at a normal pace 5.3, 17080 “Hiking, cross country” 6.0, 17012 “Backpacking, hiking with a daypack, organized walking with daypack” 7.8 and 17010 “Backpacking” 7.0. The climbs run from 5.3 METs (no load, 1 to 5% grade) to 10.0 (“Climbing hills, 20+ pound load, 5 to 20% grade, moderate to brisk pace”), and walking downhill at 2.5 mph is 3.3.

The calculator uses one row at a time and its MET as printed. The Compendium asks exactly that: “Please do not change MET values or combine activities with different MET levels.” So a climb row counts only the minutes you spend on that climb, never the whole hike. It is an average for adults, not a measurement of you: your fitness, the terrain and your pace change what you really burn.

Calories per hour of hiking, by weight

Every cell is the row’s MET × the weight in kilograms (pounds × 0.45359237) × one hour, to the nearest 10 calories.

Worked examples

Calories burned hiking 5 miles. A 150 lb hiker, 5 flat miles at a normal pace: Naismith’s rule gives 1 h 40 min, so about 600 calories (120 a mile). With a day pack, the same walk is about 880.

An hour uphill. A 180 lb hiker climbing a steady 6 to 10% grade with no pack for an hour: about 570 calories. The hour back down at 2.5 mph is about 270.

A day of backpacking, in kilograms. 75 kg and 6 hours on the trail: about 3,150 calories on the Backpacking row, and 3,510 on the day-pack row. The Compendium prints the day pack higher (7.8 METs against 7.0); the two rows come from different studies, so pick the one that describes your hike and keep it.

Common mistakes

• Using a climb row for the whole hike. A climb’s MET covers the climb. The flat stretches and the way down cost less, so a whole hike gets a whole-hike row.
• Adding the pack to your body weight. The rows with a load already count it; the weight to type is yours.
• Counting the gross figure as weight lost. About 1 MET of every hour is what your body burns resting anyway: “more than sitting” is the hike’s own share.
• Timing the breaks as hiking. Naismith’s time is moving time; a typed time should be too.

Plan the hike

Read our beginner hiking tips, thru-hiking basics, hiking safety, waterfall hikes and boots or trail runners on the Camino. Then time the trail with the Hiking Time Calculator and check the altitude with the Altitude Sickness Planner.