How many calories are burned whil skiing?

[zinger3000]

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?

 

[57stevey]

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.

 

[Skimaine]

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

 

[severine]

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!

 

[marcski]

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.

 

[millerm277]

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.

 

[skiboarder]

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.

 

[severine]

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...

 

[SKIQUATTRO]

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

 

[ERJ-145CA]

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

 

[frozencorn]

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

 

[mikestaple]

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.......

 

[neil]

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

 

[mondeo]

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.

 

[nycskier]

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.

 

[Rambo]

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.

 

[severine]

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.

 

[goldsbar]

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.

 

[mondeo]

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.

 

[Whiteface Willy]

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.