# How many calories are burned whil skiing?



## zinger3000 (Dec 10, 2010)

*How many calories are burned while skiing?*

A quick Google search gives results of anywhere from below 400 calories per hour to well over 600 calories per hour.  I know that there are a lot of variables, such as height, weight, gender, age, etc.  I assume that any number is based just on skiing - not including time waiting for the lift or time on the lift.  So the number of calories burned per hour is somewhat useless anyway, since you can't physically ski for 1 hour straight.  Maybe a more useful tool would be calories burned per vertical feet.  Suppose you have a 1,000 ft vertical at a particular mountain, with an expert trail going straight down the liftline, and a beginner trail which winds its way down around the mountain.  I would suspect that going down either trail would burn the same number of calories, since you need more effort on the black diamond.  

The reason I ask is because I carefully track calories consumed through eating and calories burned through exercise, and have lost 42 pounds since April (26 to go!).  I enter all my info into a spreadsheet, and it calculates number of pounds burned per day (usually between 0.1 and 0.2) and a running total, and it's quite accurate.  I'm just not sure how to calculate calories burned per ski session.

Any thoughts?


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## 57stevey (Dec 10, 2010)

zinger3000 said:


> A quick Google search gives results of anywhere from below 400 calories per hour to well over 600 calories per hour.  I know that there are a lot of variables, such as height, weight, gender, age, etc.  I assume that any number is based just on skiing - not including time waiting for the lift or time on the lift.  So the number of calories burned per hour is somewhat useless anyway, since you can't physically ski for 1 hour straight.  Maybe a more useful tool would be calories burned per vertical feet.  Suppose you have a 1,000 ft vertical at a particular mountain, with an expert trail going straight down the liftline, and a beginner trail which winds its way down around the mountain.  I would suspect that going down either trail would burn the same number of calories, since you need more effort on the black diamond.
> 
> The reason I ask is because I carefully track calories consumed through eating and calories burned through exercise, and have lost 42 pounds since April (26 to go!).  I enter all my info into a spreadsheet, and it calculates number of pounds burned per day (usually between 0.1 and 0.2) and a running total, and it's quite accurate.  I'm just not sure how to calculate calories burned per ski session.
> 
> Any thoughts?



Don't know the number but it's a lot (my first thought was "all of them" 

But good on you! I'm down 22 pounds since Memorial Day myself - just cut out big meals at suppertime, nothing as scientific as your method.


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## Skimaine (Dec 10, 2010)

Have you considered getting a wearable calorie counter. Fitbit (spelling) that Mrs Skimaine uses.


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## severine (Dec 10, 2010)

Congrats!

I wore my Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS/HRM tonight while out and it claimed I burned about 500 calories in one hour of skiing blue trails at Sundown. Can't tell you how accurate that is, but that's what I got. I know I've used calorie burning calculators on the internet before (like on sparkpeople.com) and they seem to over-estimate. The Garmin likely did as well considering it was on for all the lift rides back to the top.

Good luck!


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## marcski (Dec 11, 2010)

It will depend on the terrain you ski, how you ski it and how fast you ski it. 

Your original hypothesis is faulty...in your example Ripping that expert trail straight down the mountain with lots of high energy high speed turns or more so if it was bumped or in the trees will definitely burn more calories than a green trail that meanders down the hill even if they both cover the same vertical.


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## millerm277 (Dec 11, 2010)

I'm going to suspect that it's near impossible to measure unfortunately, the best you can probably do is come up with a minimum that it's definitely above.


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## skiboarder (Dec 11, 2010)

You can find out by using a heart rate monitor.  Make sure it has a calorie counting feature.  You input your weigth and it provides a running total of calories burned. They are accurate.


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## severine (Dec 11, 2010)

skiboarder said:


> You can find out by using a heart rate monitor.  Make sure it has a calorie counting feature.  You input your weigth and it provides a running total of calories burned. They are accurate.



They are except the lift rides shouldn't really count... that's rest, which while your heart rate may be more elevated than usual, it's closer to maintenance than exercise (you know, because your body burns calories all day whether or not you exercise... you don't want to count the regularly burned calories into your equation when you're trying to lose weight). So in theory, you could use a HRM and turn it off for every lift ride, but that's unlikely to happen.

Like I said, I tested it last night. Had the HRM on for 52 minutes, each run was about 4 minutes down the hill and there were 6 of them (so that leaves 28 minutes-ish that I wasn't skiing), and it claims I burned 511 calories. I'm not a tiny girl and I make turns when I ski. YMMV...


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## SKIQUATTRO (Dec 11, 2010)

i wore my polar heart rate monitor spring skiing last year at SB...was neat to see the spikes in HR then the resting periods on the lifts...i burnt 5800 calories, snow was heavy and we crushed bumps all day...i was training for a triathalon at that time and was in good shape....it goes to show how much good nutrition plays a part in how you feel and ski during the day


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## ERJ-145CA (Dec 11, 2010)

Probably not nearly as many as I consume in the lodge at lunch.


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## frozencorn (Dec 12, 2010)

I had heard it was something closer to 100 per hour.


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## mikestaple (Dec 12, 2010)

No idea.  But I do know that a ski vacation is the only vacation that when I return I weigh less than when I left.  And this includes a lot of malted beverage sampling.

Of course sherpa-ing kids and their gear around the mountain certainly helps in the calorie burn area too.......


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## neil (Dec 12, 2010)

Probably not enough to offset that Wendy's I got afterwards the other day


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## mondeo (Dec 12, 2010)

severine said:


> They are except the lift rides shouldn't really count... that's rest, which while your heart rate may be more elevated than usual, it's closer to maintenance than exercise (you know, because your body burns calories all day whether or not you exercise... you don't want to count the regularly burned calories into your equation when you're trying to lose weight). So in theory, you could use a HRM and turn it off for every lift ride, but that's unlikely to happen.
> 
> Like I said, I tested it last night. Had the HRM on for 52 minutes, each run was about 4 minutes down the hill and there were 6 of them (so that leaves 28 minutes-ish that I wasn't skiing), and it claims I burned 511 calories. I'm not a tiny girl and I make turns when I ski. YMMV...


But the slightly elevated heart rate on the lift is still recovering from the run. I'd just subtract about 100cal/hour as the baseline metabolism.

Actually, I just don't count skiing. Or drinking. Figure the weekends are just a wash.


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## nycskier (Dec 12, 2010)

If you have a smart phone you can download a free ap called Cardio Trainer. It uses the GPS on you smart phone to track how far you skied, how fast you go and how many calories you burn.

I tried it out yesterday for the 1st time at Hunter. It worked pretty well. The only downside is the program cant tell the difference between skiing downhill and taking the chair back up. So you need to remember to manually pause it when you get to the bottom and restart it when you get to the top.

The really cool part of it is it can track where you went (which is an awesome feature for really big resorts), how many miles you skied (according to the ap I did 13 miles yesterday at Hunter) and how fast you skied. My top speed was 37.7 MPH!

Its a fun ap and might help you with your calorie counting in other non skiing activities too. I use it to track how far I bike and how long my walk home from work is.


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## Rambo (Dec 12, 2010)

I do not think you burn many calories at all downhill skiing on today's Parabolic/Shaped/Super-Side Cut skis. On the older straight skis, a skier exerted much more energy per run, with all the up motion "unweighting" that was required to turn those long monsters. Todays skiis with all the sidecut, do the work for you. So, I would think, weight loss would be minimal.


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## severine (Dec 12, 2010)

Rambo said:


> I do not think you burn many calories at all downhill skiing on today's Parabolic/Shaped/Super-Side Cut skis. On the older straight skis, a skier exerted much more energy per run, with all the up motion "unweighting" that was required to turn those long monsters. Todays skiis with all the sidecut, do the work for you. So, I would think, weight loss would be minimal.



I beg to differ. Heart rate definitely gets up, muscles get sore. Maybe if you're already in fabulous shape and a perfect skier, it would be minimal. But for those of us who aren't, it's a work-out. And if you're skiing the bumps, even more so.


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## goldsbar (Dec 12, 2010)

Are your windshield wipering your way down the hill (i.e. skidding) or are you carving high edge angles until your thighs can't take it anymore.  Same idea with moguls and trees.  My guess is it can range anywhere from low to high based on how YOU decide to ski.  As for speed and steeps, I can ski very fast and barely burn any calories.  Hitting 50 in a high edge angle carve is another matter.


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## mondeo (Dec 12, 2010)

zinger3000 said:


> A quick Google search gives results of anywhere from below 400 calories per hour to well over 600 calories per hour. I know that there are a lot of variables, such as height, weight, gender, age, etc. I assume that any number is based just on skiing - not including time waiting for the lift or time on the lift. So the number of calories burned per hour is somewhat useless anyway, since you can't physically ski for 1 hour straight. Maybe a more useful tool would be calories burned per vertical feet. Suppose you have a 1,000 ft vertical at a particular mountain, with an expert trail going straight down the liftline, and a beginner trail which winds its way down around the mountain. I would suspect that going down either trail would burn the same number of calories, since you need more effort on the black diamond.
> 
> The reason I ask is because I carefully track calories consumed through eating and calories burned through exercise, and have lost 42 pounds since April (26 to go!). I enter all my info into a spreadsheet, and it calculates number of pounds burned per day (usually between 0.1 and 0.2) and a running total, and it's quite accurate. I'm just not sure how to calculate calories burned per ski session.
> 
> Any thoughts?


Here's a thought: if you're rigorous with tracking calories, and have a proven accurate method of prediction, turn the spreadsheet around. Instead of tracking calories burned, track the skiing stats (vert, average pitch, grooming level, time, etc.) and after enough ski trips the difference between actual and predicted weight is due to skiing.


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## Whiteface Willy (Dec 12, 2010)

Skiing at Aspen last year I burned the most. In a 7 hour day my 
Garmin 310XT tracked 4000 cal burned, 38,000 vertical- cut that in half for skied vertical and I forget how many miles that was. We kept this up for a week straight. I lost alot of weight. When I'm at altitude I don't consume alcohol so I couldn't make it up by eating. I think the 310XT is accurate.


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## jaywbigred (Dec 13, 2010)

I've always operated under the assumption that it was around 400/hour while actually skiing downhill.


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## se8020 (Dec 3, 2013)

*Huh?*



SUV Steve said:


> Don't know the number but it's a lot (my first thought was "all of them"
> 
> But good on you! I'm down 22 pounds since Memorial Day myself - just cut out big meals at suppertime, nothing as scientific as your method.



I was looking for a real answer to how many calories burned- not a "I lost X pounds since whenever". Seriously? Come on- no one cares, clearly you need to lose some weight but this is supposed to be a serious site. Just answer the damn question!!


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## mriceyman (Dec 3, 2013)

se8020 said:


> I was looking for a real answer to how many calories burned- not a "I lost X pounds since whenever". Seriously? Come on- no one cares, clearly you need to lose some weight but this is supposed to be a serious site. Just answer the damn question!!



Bad day??


Sent from my iPhone


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## ScottySkis (Dec 3, 2013)

See I usually gain calories when I go skiing because I get the munchies and eat brownies or other yummy baked snacks.


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## JDMRoma (Dec 3, 2013)

se8020 said:


> I was looking for a real answer to how many calories burned- not a "I lost X pounds since whenever". Seriously? Come on- no one cares, clearly you need to lose some weight but this is supposed to be a serious site. Just answer the damn question!!



Only accurate way is to get a good HRM that shows calories burned......other than that your just guessing. 
Everyone ski's and burns calories at a different rate......


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## tomcat (Dec 3, 2013)

This was a topic on here last winter.  Maybe a search can find it.  If I remember there was a lot of replies and nobody came to agreement on a number.  I realize this post is from 2010 but I know there was another one because I remember commenting on it.


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## andrec10 (Dec 3, 2013)

Scotty said:


> See I usually gain calories when I go skiing because I get the munchies and eat brownies or other yummy baked snacks.



You sure you are not getting the munchies from something else!?


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## ScottySkis (Dec 3, 2013)

andrec10 said:


> You sure you are not getting the munchies from something else!?



I wonder what that could be hum.:beer:


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## FRITOLAYGUY (Dec 3, 2013)

How is this even possible to figure out wouldn't u have to ski an hour straight with no interruption down  continuous trail to get an accurate reading on how many calories your burning in an hour?  Whats one run last a few minutes, most of the day is spent on lifts as opposed to actual skiing.  I would think a day of skiing is more like running a 5K in 27minutes for equal calories burned.


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## wa-loaf (Dec 3, 2013)

se8020 said:


> I was looking for a real answer to how many calories burned- not a "I lost X pounds since whenever". Seriously? Come on- no one cares, clearly you need to lose some weight but this is supposed to be a serious site. Just answer the damn question!!



Way to join up and be a jerk.


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## Nick (Dec 3, 2013)

se8020 said:


> I was looking for a real answer to how many calories burned- not a "I lost X pounds since whenever". Seriously? Come on- no one cares, clearly you need to lose some weight but this is supposed to be a serious site. Just answer the damn question!!



Wow, welcome to AlpineZone  I hope you have a nice day!

Did you find this via Google? There are several other answers here that get closer to an actual value if you read through the thread.


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## Fallingdown (Dec 3, 2013)

Not enough calories to make up for the apres ski brews.


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## C-Rex (Dec 3, 2013)

nycskier said:


> The really cool part of it is it can track where you went (which is an awesome feature for really big resorts), how many miles you skied (according to the ap I did 13 miles yesterday at Hunter) and how fast you skied. My top speed was 37.7 MPH!



PSSSHHH...not even close to Tunaspeed.  Stop wasting our time.


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## BenedictGomez (Dec 3, 2013)

wa-loaf said:


> Way to join up and be a *jerk*.



I think you were too kind.


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## wa-loaf (Dec 3, 2013)

C-Rex said:


> PSSSHHH...not even close to Tunaspeed.  Stop wasting our time.



Tunaspeed?



BenedictGomez said:


> I think you were too kind.



It is a family forum ...


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## Edd (Dec 3, 2013)

wa-loaf said:


> Tunaspeed?



As in bdfree, I presume.


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## RISkier (Dec 3, 2013)

I have no idea but I do know that when we started skiing we were burning a lot of calories. We were both eating like crazy and loosing weight. Now, if we're skiing groomers not so many. Just being active and out in the cold will burn some calories but unless I get into stuff that challenges me I don't feel like I'm really working very hard.


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## CoolMike (Dec 5, 2013)

Skiing and snowboarding burns a ton of calories.  I do three long workouts a week and play in a competitive indoor soccer league and am never as tired as I am after a full day on the slopes.

For snowboarding I would guess it is comparable to a light jog (700 calories per hour).  Its very possible to have 2 hours on the slopes over a long day and consume all of your breakfast and lunch calories and go Ketonic before dinner.


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## ski stef (Dec 5, 2013)

I wore my heart rate monitor out the other day at A Basin.  For being on the mountain a little over an hour I think it said I burned something like 266 calories (which doesn't seem much to me?  1 hour ice hockey game I burn 375; skinning for an hour is almost 550 for me)  It was pretty interesting how fast my heart rate slowed down on the chairlift so it never really got up to a point where I was consistently working out;  It was also just groomers so it's not like I was working hard in powder.  I will wear it again on a day that I know I am sticking out for a long time and working hard in some deep pow turns, yaa.  I guess it's different for everyone.  I've definitely learned that the apps on your phone that tell you how many calories you burn wayyyyyy over exaggerate.  At least for me.


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## C-Rex (Dec 5, 2013)

I feel like snowboarding is more anarobic than arobic exercise.  The only time I really find myself getting out of breath is when ripping moguls or riding in the woods where lots of consecutive quick turns is required.  Riding groomers is more like doing a wall press, holding constant pressure on your quads for heel edge, and constant pressure on your calfs for toeside turns.  I love the worn out, exhausted feeling at the end of a good day riding.  Nothing better than a hot shower, a hearty meal and beer, and then melting into a couch.  It's very zen-like.


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## Nick (Dec 5, 2013)

Fallingdown said:


> Not enough calories to make up for the apres ski brews.



So, so true


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## from_the_NEK (Dec 5, 2013)

wa-loaf said:


> Tunaspeed?



You really need to read this thread if you haven't already.  http://forums.alpinezone.com/showth...7-2013-Springish-and-now-I-can-prove-my-speed


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## petemac77 (Jan 11, 2014)

4000 if you are really pushing it.


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## Wavewheeler (Jan 11, 2014)

ERJ-145CA said:


> Probably not nearly as many as I consume in the lodge at lunch.



Yes and afterwards at après ski and dinner afterwards.:beer: I think for me it all kind of evens out.


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## skiNEwhere (Jan 11, 2014)

Accoring to alpinereplay, over 2700, but only 1400 were from skiing, I guess the rest were the body doing its thing it does even when you're not active. I think that's a low number though, because I was hitting glades and bumps half the day. Factoring those in I'd say 3500.


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