calories hill hike

yirara

I went on a hike today, up a very steep slope without a path (if I fell I would have rolled down a very long distance) from about 50-500m altitude, crossed a few small but deep snow fields, down again, and then along a path that was partly still steep but easier to walk apart from a few small scrambles.

https://gpsies.com/map.do?fileId=uincuebcgealxwdm

The link above is the hike approximately, though I walked closer to 8km as I did not walk straight up and down the hill but in serpentines.

Question is: how many calories do I allow myself for that? For a flat hike I'd use 0.37*weight(kg)*distance(km), but both the hike up, and down (walking in half squats mostly) of course was a lot more difficult. My fitbit gives me 970 kcal for a hike (gross? not sure) but I'm sure that's massively inflated for a 60kg woman. Any suggestions?

sgt1372

I use the following calculator to estimate the cals burned while hiking:

https://caloriesburnedhq.com/calories-burned-hiking/

It takes into account your weight, the weight of your pack (if any), the duration of the hike, the length of the hike, the degree of slope of the hills and the nature of the terrain.

I've not found anything better than this.

yirara

Hmm.. I'm not sure this works. I got 700kcal for the steep part The problem is that the steepest part was up and down a normal fault scarp, which is around 45-60 degrees. That's quite a bit more than the 'more than 10 degrees' in this calculator. However, a famous trail runner ran this route, up and down in a few minutes. I, with chronically low blood pressure that drops down or stays down on hill walks and hypermobile ankles need a lot more time to get up and down again. So basically, this calculator seems to be driven mainly by duration. Hill walks here in Scotland take a lot longer when it's wet, as our hills are very steep and very slippery. Hmm.. maybe I'll give myself 500kcal for the whole hike?

sgt1372

Works for me.

Basically, like any calculator it's GI-GO.

Don't think you can hike any truly 45° slope, you'd have to climb it and the calculator is not designed for that. It's designed for normal trail hiking thru a variety of terrain.

There are apps that will also calculate the °slope and on very steep sections that I hike (looking straight up w/head tilted back), the slope is seldom more than 20°.

You might try actually meaduring the slope rather than guessing it and breaking the hike into sections based on variations in slope and terrain also helps increase accuracy.

yirara

Well, part of the hike was on the slip face of a normal fault. Those, in hard rock are usually 60 degrees. But of course erosion and vegetation softens this a bit, and of course you don't scramble up a hill, but rather you walk up in small serpentines (and hope you don't slip as it will be a very long tumble), so yes, it's not a very steep slope you walk up but a longer, more moderate one just from the technique of getting up there. This steepness also makes getting down very tiresome, btw. As I'm out and about pretty much every weekend I think I'll just use half of what Fitbit gives me (that's roughly 500 in this case) and see how things go.

And our hills: I have friends in mountain rescue. It's very often tourists that need rescuing. They think: it's just a small hill, so what can go wrong. But our hills really are not like hills, but rather like compressed mountains