How Many Calories Do You Burn Backpacking?
Underpack food and the last day of your trip becomes a hungry slog; overpack and you carried dead weight the whole way. Backpacking burns anywhere from 300 to 700+ kcal per hour, and where you fall in that range depends on numbers a generic step counter never sees: your pack weight, the grade, and the surface underfoot.
This calculator uses the military-grade formula for loaded walking to turn body weight, load, speed, and grade into calories per hour, a trip total, and a concrete answer to the question that actually matters at the trailhead: how much food should be in the bag?
Estimate your energy burn
- Food to pack for this effort
- ≈ 1.4 lb of trail food
- Metabolic rate
- 480 W
Total energy burned
2,479 kcal
413 kcal per hour at this effort
Grade is the average climb steepness: 100 × elevation gain ÷ distance. Downhill sections are counted as level walking.
How this is calculated
The engine is the Pandolf equation (Pandolf, Givoni & Goldman, 1977), developed at the US Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine to predict the energy cost of soldiers marching under load:
M = 1.5W + 2.0(W+L)(L/W)² + η(W+L)(1.5V² + 0.35VG)
W is body weight, L the load, V walking speed, G the grade, and η a terrain factor from Soule & Goldman's field measurements — 1.1 for dirt trail up to 2.1 for snow. The three terms are, in order: the cost of standing, the cost of carrying the load, and the cost of moving both up the hill. Watts convert to kcal/h at 1 W ≈ 0.86 kcal/h.
Food weight is derived at 4,000 kcal per kg — the energy density of typical dried trail food (about 110 kcal per ounce). Dial your menu denser (nuts, oils, bars) and the same calories weigh less.
Frequently asked questions
Why does this show more calories than my fitness app?
Generic apps estimate 'walking' — they don't know you're hauling 12 kg up a 10% grade on a dirt trail. The Pandolf equation was built by the US Army specifically for loaded walking, and pack weight plus grade routinely double the energy cost of the same distance on flat pavement.
How much does pack weight actually matter?
Two ways: the load itself costs energy to carry (rising with the square of the load-to-body-weight ratio), and every kilogram also raises the cost of each vertical meter. Dropping pack weight from 20 kg to 12 kg on a full hiking day typically saves several hundred kilocalories — one more reason ultralight pays.
How much food should I pack per day of backpacking?
Multiply your hiking hours by the kcal/h figure, add roughly 1,600–1,900 kcal for your resting metabolism over the rest of the day, then divide by the energy density of your food (trail food averages ~4,000 kcal per kg). For most people that lands between 0.6 and 0.9 kg of food per full day.
Does the calculator include my resting metabolism?
It includes the metabolic cost while you are walking (the 1.5 W-per-kg standing term is part of Pandolf), but not the hours in camp. For multi-day food planning, add your basal rate — roughly 1,500–1,800 kcal per day for most adults — on top of the hiking total.
What about downhill — do I burn calories descending?
Yes, though less than climbing. The Pandolf equation is only validated for level and uphill walking, so this tool counts descent as level ground. That slightly overstates energy on gentle downhills and understates it on steep, braking descents — the errors mostly cancel over a full route.