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Calories burned while hiking

kayakinggrrl
kayakinggrrl Posts: 101 Member
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I entered my exercise for today, a 2 hour hike carrying just a fanny pack with water and a snack, and chose "hiking, cross country" as my choice. The other choices were hiking uphill, carrying less than 10lbs and uphill with greater than 10 lbs. I didn't walk uphill the whole time (though it felt like it a couple of times). I'm not sure that hiking cross country is right either because I was on a trail. It seems odd that I burned 1072 calories for just a 2 hour hike.

What do you all use to claim exercise points when hiking?

Replies

  • RoyBoling
    RoyBoling Posts: 54
    I would say that cross country would involve no trail or a poorly maintained, rocky trail. If you were on a well maintained trail with some hills, I would probably use walking and go with the higher rate of three or four mph.
  • kayakinggrrl
    kayakinggrrl Posts: 101 Member
    It was a fairly rocky trail...to the point that I wished I had borrowed hiking poles. I did have to really concertrate on foot placement for most of the hike. The first 1.3 miles were nearly continuously up hill. Maybe I will average the more rapid walking and hiking. I definitely feel like I did more than just a walk in the woods.
  • RoyBoling
    RoyBoling Posts: 54
    Ok, you could probably count the climb as using a stair climber. I have ran into similar issues and tried to find a similiar activity to substitute. Most people seem to work out in gyms rather than outdoors. I ended up buying a fitbit, it has been working well for me.

    Just finished loading my fitbit info for the day. This morning I climbed 50 flights of stairs ( at the local stadium) for 27 minutes. It logged the calories burnt at 265 for me. So, with your description of the hike, your burn should be pretty accurate.
  • imaginaryplaces
    imaginaryplaces Posts: 123 Member
    I struggle with this too. The MFP database values for hiking do seem awfully high. For hikes that involve much elevation gain, I use this calculator: http://hikingscience.blogspot.com/p/calculate-calories-burned_22.html
  • RoyBoling
    RoyBoling Posts: 54
    Thanks for the cool link. It has been awhile since my exercise phys class, brings back memories.
  • kayakinggrrl
    kayakinggrrl Posts: 101 Member
    I ended up splitting the hike in half to calculate exercise calories. The first half was rocky uphill and I obviously walked slower uphill than down. So I used uphill hiking with less than 10 lbs. For the return trip, I was going mostly downhill so I used walking downhill at 2.5 mph (I'm so slow on rocky down hill hikes). It didn't come up with as many calories as the MFP hiking but it was somewhere in the 800-850 range for those two hours. That seems reasonable when I compare it to jogging. And it's still a respectable amount of exercise.

    Thanks for the earlier advice.
  • missallenxox
    missallenxox Posts: 175 Member
    i will just say that i use the cross country hiking entry on here and it is almost dead on to my heart rate monitor for groomed trails. for a real mountain hiking trip it is ridiculously more, about 1000 cals an hour lol well i averaged that on a 5 hour hike up 6075 ft elevation mountain. hope that helps.
  • 1960HikerDude
    1960HikerDude Posts: 215 Member
    There are so many variables on a hike that affect your calorie burn. I was using Endomondo to estimate my calorie burn on hikes.. Then I got a heart rate monitor. The calorie burn estimate from Endoondo is nearly twice the number reported by the HRM. If you want an accurate measurement of your calorie burn during hikes, get an HRM. I got a Polar FT4 from Amazon for under $70.

    I still like to use Endomondo to record my tracks and calculate distance. But for my calorie burn I rely on the HRM exclusively.

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