Hiking or mountain climbing is a lot of fun. It is both a recreational activity and an exercise. If you are interested in mountain climbing, you might be wondering, “How many calories do mountain climbers burn?” This post gives you the answer.
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The Factors of Consideration
There are a lot of factors that come into play when determining how many calories mountain climbers burn. These factors include:
- How heavy you are
- The weight of the backpack you are carrying
- The length of time you climb
- The hiking distance
- How quickly you hike
- The landscape you climb (cross country, uphill, downhill, etc.)
- The incline of the hills or how angled the steeps are
Here are a couple of examples. A 150-pound individual hiking cross-country for 60 minutes at 2.5 miles per hour will expend 351 calories. The same person will burn 464 calories while trekking for 60 minutes at a speed of 3 miles per hour and up and down hills with a 4 percent slope.
There are a lot of calculations involved if you want to find out how many calories you will burn in every mountain climbing scenario. But to give you a deeper understanding of the subject, here’s a comparison between the calories lost in walking vs. mountain climbing.
The Effects of the Backpack on Mountain Climbers
Your backpack’s weight significantly affects your experience. The number of calories burned every 2-hour trip increases by about 5 for every kg of backpack weight.
The weight of your bag shouldn’t be more than 20% of your body weight. Therefore, a backpack should not weigh more than 40 lbs on a 200 lb person. A 150-pound person shouldn’t carry a load that weighs more than 30 pounds.
The Effects of the Steep on Mountain Climbers
Here are a few instances of the roughly burnt calories when walking a mile uphill. Each illustration assumes a 1-mile ascent at a constant speed.
The person’s weight, the backpack’s weight, and the hill’s gradient differ in each illustration.
150-pound individual
- One mile up a mild incline slope without a load burns 175 calories.
- 20-pound pack: 200 calories after 1 mile of easy climbing
- 20-pound bag: 235 calories for a mile-long, moderately steep climb
- One mile on severe inclines with a 20-pound bag burns 300 calories.
200-pound person
- Two hundred thirty calories from a mile up a modest incline slope without a load.
- 20-pound bag: 255 calories after one mile of easy climbing
- 20-pound pack: 305 calories for a mile-long, moderately steep climb
- 20-pound bag: 390 calories for a mile-long steep incline climb
In short, a mile-long uphill climb burns between 175 to 390 calories.
Calories Burned in Mountain Climbing vs. Walking
How many calories do mountain climbers burn compared to regular walkers? Walking burns fewer calories than hiking does. A cross-country hike will be more effective for weight loss than a daily block walk.
Let’s examine a few instances:
You will burn about 580 calories if you weigh 175 lbs. and walk for two hours at a leisurely pace. You would burn about 1,120 calories if you spent those 2 hours hiking up hills while toting a 30-pound backpack.
That adds another 540 calories!
You will burn about 730 calories if you weigh 220 lbs. and walk for two hours at an average speed. Instead, you can burn about 1,420 calories by spending those 2 hours on a rugged climb while carrying a 40-pound rucksack. That is 690 extra calories, to be exact.
Hiking instead of walking can burn up to twice as many calories, regardless of weight.
Is Mountain Climbing Good for Weight Loss?
Does hiking help you lose weight? Simply put, yeah! An excellent approach to losing weight is to go hiking.
Do you like to go trekking on trails? Have you got quick access to some fantastic hiking trails? The best exercise for burning additional calories and losing weight is hiking.
Make hiking a regular part of your schedule by going many times per week. And cut back on calories, and you’ll soon notice inches disappearing.
For instance: a 90-minute stroll over gentle slopes with a 10-pound backpack will burn more than 700 calories if you weigh around 200 pounds.
If those hills were steeper, the number of calories burned would have been closer to 900. Three thousand five hundred more calories must be burned off than consumed to lose one pound of weight. Doing that same hike with the same backpack weight five times will lose you a pound!
Last Word
Regular mountain climbers burn more calories in general compared to walkers. The slopes, weight of a pack, weight of the climber, speed of climbing, distance, and length of the climb all contribute to the number of calories mountain climbers burn.
It’s hard to say precisely how many calories a person will burn when mountain climbing. But rest assured, it will be at least two times more than walking.