Why these exist#
Most camping questions have a numerical answer that nobody publishes, because the answer depends on your inputs. How much gas for four days depends on your stove, your menu, the water temperature and the wind. How cold your bag is good for depends on your pad, your dinner and how you personally sleep.
So rather than publishing an average that is wrong for everybody, we published the models. Each calculator opens with a result on default values, updates as you type, and prints the intermediate steps so you can check them or redo them on paper.
The seven calculators#
- Sleep system temperature calculator. Converts a label rating into your realistic comfort temperature, then ranks the cheapest ways to gain the next degree.
- Pack base weight calculator. Base weight, skin-out weight, load as a share of body weight, and which category is furthest over budget.
- Stove fuel calculator. Grams of fuel from the energy your menu needs, with corrections for wind, cold and simmering.
- Cooler ice calculator. How much ice a trip needs, split into cooling the load and absorbing the leak.
- Power budget calculator. Watt-hours per day by device, with conversion losses, cold derating and solar harvest.
- Tent size calculator. Floor area, interior length, peak height and vestibule from your actual group.
- Camp food calculator. Calories and grams per person per day, and what calorie density does to the total.
Frequently asked questions#
Do the calculators work offline?#
Yes. Once a page has loaded, the calculation runs entirely in your browser with no further network use. That is deliberate, because the moment you most need to check a fuel figure is often the moment you have no signal.
Is anything I type saved or sent anywhere?#
No. There is no account, no analytics on the inputs and no server round trip. Packing checklists remember their ticks in your own browser storage, on your device only, and clearing that storage removes them.
Can I see the formulas?#
Every calculator page includes a section that writes out the arithmetic, the constants used and the assumptions made, so the result can be reproduced with a pen. The chart data on our guides is downloadable in the same spirit: each figure has an expandable table of the numbers behind it, and all of them are collected with CSV downloads on the reference data page.
How often are the models updated?#
When a standard changes, when we find an error, or when a reader shows us the model is wrong. Changes that alter an answer are logged on the corrections page.