I have seen posts in the past where people have wondered about caloric intake needed on the trail. I was jumping around to some sites and ran up on this. http://www.changingshape.com/resources/calculators/caloriesburnedcalculator.asp
It will give you an idea about how much you’ll burn per day based on weight, type of backpacking and the length of time each day your moving. From what I saw 2 years ago it’s not far off.
BearKat
I can offer some guesses based on my own weight loss. Net, I think I burned about 300 calories per hour due to hiking.
Calculations for those interested:
I started the trail weighing 195 lb. and weighed 174 after 54 hiking days. If we figure it takes 3500 calories to lose a pound, this comes to 73,500 calories, or roughly 1400 more calories burned than taken in per day.
I probably consumed 2000-3000 calories per day over that stretch – it’s hard to do more on the trail – so that would put me at about 4000 calories burned per day total. If you figure in basal metabolism of about 2000 calories, that translates to about 2000 net calories burned per day due to exercise.
I hiked about 7 hours per day on average, so this works out to maybe 300 calories burned per hour. This seems to be a little less than the calculators allow, but it’s in the same ball park.
YMMV, of course. I only did 11 miles per day; I’m sure people doing 30’s burn a lot more.
Bob McCaw
I lost 50 pounds on my thru hike in '03. I had read in Backpacker that the average person (i think that they used a 150-170lb. man) burned about 1000calories an hour backpacking with a 30 pound pack and hiking/trekking poles. Slightly less w/o the poles. That sounds reasonable to me. I was 215lbs. when I started, carried a pack upward to 50lbs. and used hiking poles and the weight jsut dropped off. I ate everything that I possibly could in towns (sometimes gaining 8 pounds a weekend). Even with all the food I was still losing weight rapidly…finishing the trail at 160lbs. I hiked for 8 - 10 hours a day (more {but slower} at the beginning and less {but faster} at the end). Either way, eat as much as you can carry when you are thru-hiking, use a multivitamin and look for Jumbo Frosted Honey Buns…
Michael Sanwald (FatCat)
So, we have one post with a rate of 300cal/hr and another with 1000 cal/hr. Seems a lot different,but there are a couple other factors they didnt mention…Height and age. Both factor into their basal metabolic rate and the heavier hiker of the two also would have a higher rate at the start because of the added body weight he was carrying(and the heavier pack too). Interestingly, their weights later were close to the same. I think what actually happens on a hike is that the body eventually loses weight to get to some lower limit which is a certain %of the ideal body weight for that hikers age and height. If one tries to go below that level, the body simply “shuts down” and does not let you have the energy needed to hike, or u get sick, etc to make u stop. I think the bottom line is you cant possibly carry enough, so enjoy the weight loss while u can.
Cutman11