Hiking Time Calculator

How to use this tool

Enter the distance, total ascent and total descent, a pace, rest minutes per hour of walking and a start time. Five rules time the hike; their mean is the suggested walking time, and rests turn it into a planning time and a finish clock time. Type a sunset time to compare it with the finish; nothing is looked up. A Tranter fitness level adds a sixth rule.

The input people most often get wrong is total ascent: every metre climbed along the route, not the summit height above the start. Read it from an elevation profile. A route steeper than 45 degrees on average is refused, usually feet typed into a metres box. This is general planning information, not a safety plan for a specific route; conditions, weather, load and fitness change times, so carry the ten essentials and tell someone the route.

What the calculation is doing

Naismith's rule (1892) allows one hour per 3 miles plus one hour per 2,000 feet of ascent. The tool uses the metric form, 5 km and 600 m an hour, 10 minutes per 100 m; the imperial form runs 1.7% longer on the default hike. Mountaineering Scotland quotes 4 km an hour with the same climb allowance, giving 4 h 20 min here instead of 3 h 44 min; the relaxed pace scales both terms, so it differs. Langmuir (1984) subtracts 10 minutes per 300 m of descent on slopes of 5 to 12 degrees and adds 10 minutes on steeper ones; the tool takes the slope from the route's mean, 13.3% or 7.6 degrees by default. Wikipedia gives Langmuir's base speed as 5 km/h and UK Hillwalking as 4; the tool keeps 5. Tranter's table converts a Naismith time to your fitness, the minutes you take to climb 1,000 feet over half a mile: 9 hours becomes 11.5 at fitness 25.

Tobler's function (1993, from Imhof's marching data) gives speed in km/h as 6 × e^(−3.5 × |slope + 0.05|): 5.04 on the flat, a peak of 6 on a 5% descent, and 0.6 times that off a path. The tool applies it to a climbing part and a descending part at the mean slope.

The German Alpine Club rule, behind DIN 33466, is 4 km, 300 m up or 500 m down an hour (one blog says 400 down), with half of the smaller of the horizontal and vertical times added to the larger. The Swiss rule of thumb is 15 minutes per kilometre, per 100 m up and per 200 m down, added, which is 4 km, 400 m up and 800 m down an hour. Official Swiss signposts use 4.2 km/h on the flat and a 15 term polynomial whose coefficients were not available, so the rule of thumb stands in. Munter's effort kilometres are left out because no primary source could be reached.

Pace divides every rule by 0.8, 1 or 1.2, roughly flat speeds of 4, 5 and 6 km an hour; Tranter's table already allows for fitness and is not scaled.

Why ascent costs more than distance, and why downhill has a price

Naismith trades every kilometre of climb for 8.33 km of flat walking; the imperial form gives 7.92, the figure Philip Scarf published in 2008. The Swiss rule says 10 and the German rule 13.3, so the rules differ by a third over how heavy climbing is. The reason for the premium is physical: lifting a walker 800 m costs work fixed by the height gained, however short the path.

Descending is not costless. Steep descents slow walkers, which is why Langmuir adds time past 12 degrees, and Tobler falls from 6 km/h at a 5% descent to 3.86 at 10 degrees and 2.00 at 20 degrees. Read literally, Langmuir implies 12.2 km/h on a 12 degree descent and 3.1 on a 12.1 degree one, so treat it as a rule of thumb. Tobler peaks on a gentle downhill: 3 km with 250 m of descent is timed at 34 min against 36 min for level ground.

For the default hike the tool splits Tobler's function into 6 km up at 3.16 km/h (1 h 54 min) and 6 km down at 4.48 (1 h 20 min), 3 h 14 min in all. The net slope, ascent minus descent, is 0% here and gives 2 h 23 min, 26% too fast, because both a climb and a descent cost time. How the route is really split matters little: 4 km at +20% then 8 km at −10% takes 3 h 11 min, and 8 km at +10% then 4 km at −20% takes 3 h 23 min, within 4%. Above a mean slope of about 29% the summary breaks down.

Langmuir later advised planning for the fitness of the slowest member of a party. The default hike is 3 h 40 min of walking at a fast pace and 5 h 30 min at a relaxed one, so set the pace for the slowest person.

Walking times for common hikes, and Tobler speeds by slope

Walking time by rule at an average pace, without rests; the mean is the suggested walking time.

Tobler's speed on a path, by slope; multiply by 0.6 off a path.

A worked example you can check on paper

Default hike: 12 km, 800 m up and down, average pace, 10 minutes of rest an hour, start 08:00. Naismith: 12 ÷ 5 + 800 ÷ 600 = 2.400 + 1.333 = 3.733 h. Langmuir: 13.3% is 7.6 degrees, gentle, so 3.733 − 800 ÷ 300 × 10 ÷ 60 = 3.289 h. Tobler: 6 ÷ (6 × e^(−3.5 × 0.1833)) + 6 ÷ (6 × e^(−3.5 × 0.0833)) = 6 ÷ 3.158 + 6 ÷ 4.482 = 1.9 + 1.339 = 3.238 h. German: horizontal 12 ÷ 4 = 3.000 h, vertical 800 ÷ 300 + 800 ÷ 500 = 4.267 h, so 4.267 + 1.500 = 5.767 h. Swiss: (12 + 8 + 4) × 0.25 = 6.000 h. The mean is 4.405 h, 4 h 24 min; rests add 4.405 × 10 ÷ 60 = 0.734 h; the planning time is 5 h 08 min, and the finish is 08:00 + 5 h 08 min = 13:08.

Mistakes that catch people out

Using the summit height as the ascent. Total ascent counts every climb along the way. Enter the descent too, because two rules charge for it.

Trusting one rule. On the default hike they span 2 h 46 min, from 3 h 14 min to 6 h 00 min. The alpine rules assume 300 to 400 m of climbing an hour, Naismith 600. Trust your own record of similar hikes.

Mixing units. Feet typed into a metres box make the route look 3.3 times steeper. Flip the units switch first; it converts the boxes.

Planning to the sunset. A finish at sunset leaves nothing for a wrong turn. Set a turn around time and check the slowest rule against the sunset box.

Popular calculations

Each opens the calculator with those figures filled in, showing the planning time with rests.

Day hikes by distance and ascent

Mountain days with a big ascent

Miles and feet

Family pace

Climb only or descent only

Well known routes, from published figures

Late starts and sunset checks

How this was checked

A script of 59 checks passes. Naismith reproduced UK Hillwalking's 7.5 km and 200 m example (1 h 50 min), Wikipedia's 20 km and 1,600 m example (32.8 km flat) and all 32 cells of Mountaineering Scotland's timing chart. Langmuir's 5 and 12 degree edges and every cell of Tranter's table matched, including 9 hours at fitness 25 giving 11.5. Tobler matched 20 rows of Wikipedia's speed table within 0.005 km/h, with 5.037 on the flat and a brute force peak of 6 at −0.05. The German rule matched three published examples: 4 h, 7 h 39 min against 7 h 40 min, and 7 h 54 min against 7 h 50 min, where the source rounds 2 h 24 min to 2 h 20 min. The two wordings of the Swiss rule agree, miles match converted metres, and 3,000 random inputs gave no undefined value.

Against published times, the mean plus 10 minutes an hour gives 7 h 59 min for Ben Nevis (walkhighlands: 7 to 9 hours), 6 h 14 min for Snowdon by the Llanberis Path (Snowdonia National Park Authority: 7 hours) and 9 h 32 min for Half Dome at 14 miles (National Park Service: 10 to 12 hours). Naismith alone falls short on all three. Published times include different things, so this is a sanity check. Also used: Bergfreunde, bergsteiger.de, SRF, Beobachter, Swiss Hiking and Tobler's 1993 report.

Common questions

How long does it take to hike 10 miles?

On level ground the rules give 3 h 12 min to 4 h 01 min of walking, a mean of 3 h 32 min. With 2,000 ft of ascent and descent the mean is 4 h 48 min, from 3 h 33 min to 6 h 19 min. Rests come on top, so plan about 5 h 36 min at an average pace.

What is Naismith's rule?

A rule of thumb from 1892: one hour for every 3 miles, plus one hour for every 2,000 feet of ascent. In metric form, 5 km an hour plus 10 minutes per 100 m of climb. It ignores descent, terrain and fitness.

How fast do people hike?

Tobler's function gives 5.04 km/h (3.1 mph) on level ground, 2.72 km/h on a 10 degree climb and 3.86 on a 10 degree descent. The pace setting scales the rules from 0.8 to 1.2 times.

How do you calculate hiking time with elevation gain?

Time the distance at a flat speed, then add time per block of climbing: 10 minutes per 100 m for Naismith, 15 for the Swiss rule and 20 for the German rule. For 12 km with 800 m of ascent and 800 m of descent the rules give 3 h 44 min, 6 h 00 min and 5 h 46 min.

Does hiking time include breaks?

No. The German and Swiss sources say their times exclude rests, and the tool treats every rule that way. The rest box adds minutes per hour of walking; the default of 10 is a planning choice, not a published constant.

How accurate is a hiking time calculator?

Expect an error of about a quarter. In a 2023 University of Edinburgh preprint testing 7,636 UK GPS tracks, Naismith's rule averaged a 26.36% error in speed and Tobler's function 26.17%. That is why the tool shows the spread of the rules.

Related Calculators and Reference

• Sunrise and Sunset Calculator: the sunset time to type in for your date and place.
• Grade to Degrees Converter: turn the mean slope from percent into degrees.
• Pace Calculator: find your own flat pace before choosing a preset.
• Calories Burned Calculator: plan food for the hike once you know the time.
• Steps to Miles Converter: turn a tracker step count into a distance to enter.
• National Park Service, Hike Smart: the ten essentials, telling someone your plan and setting a turn around time.