Enter your body weight, backpack weight, hiking duration, distance, and elevation gain to find out how many calories you burned hiking. Adjust for your age and gender for a more personalised result. You'll get your total calories burned, an estimated calories per hour rate, and a breakdown of effort by intensity.
Total Calories Burned
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Calories Burned Per Hour
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Estimated MET Value
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Hike Intensity
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Calories Per km
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A 70 kg person hiking at moderate intensity for 1 hour burns roughly 400–500 calories. The exact figure depends on your weight, terrain difficulty, pace, and whether you're carrying a pack. Hilly or mountainous terrain significantly increases the calorie burn compared to flat trails.
The calculation uses the MET (Metabolic Equivalent of Task) formula: Calories = MET × Weight (kg) × Time (hours). The MET value is adjusted based on your hiking speed (derived from distance and duration) and elevation gain, which increases effort intensity. Backpack weight also raises the effective MET.
Yes — hiking is an excellent low-impact activity for weight loss. A moderately challenging 2-hour hike can burn 600–900+ calories depending on your body weight and the terrain. Combining regular hiking with a moderate calorie deficit is an effective and enjoyable strategy for losing weight.
A 3-mile hike typically burns between 250 and 400 calories for an average adult, depending on pace, body weight, and terrain. Adding a loaded backpack or significant elevation gain can push this noticeably higher.
Yes. Carrying extra weight increases the metabolic demand of hiking. Each kilogram of pack weight adds a small but meaningful increase to your calorie burn — a 10 kg pack can add 5–10% more calories burned compared to hiking with no pack.
Generally yes. Hiking typically involves uneven terrain, inclines, and sometimes a loaded pack — all of which burn more calories per hour than flat road walking. Trails also engage stabiliser muscles more, providing added fitness benefits beyond simple calorie expenditure.
A rim-to-rim hike in the Grand Canyon covers around 35–40 km with significant elevation change, and can burn 3,000–5,000+ calories for an average adult over a full day. Calorie needs vary widely based on weight, pack load, temperature, and individual fitness level.
MET values for hiking typically range from 5.3 (easy, flat trail) up to 8.0 or higher (steep, strenuous hiking with a heavy pack). This calculator estimates the MET dynamically based on your speed and elevation gain to give a more realistic result than a fixed value.