Burning Off Halloween Calories, Montana Style

How big is your Halloween haul this year? If you're a run-of-the-mill trick or treater, you probably have a bag that contains over 3,500 calories of sugary sweet goodness. Hope you don't eat it all in one night!

The USDA recommends getting kids a good healthy meal before hitting the trick or treat circuit, but there's a chance that step will be skipped. So how do you burn off 3,500 calories Montana-style? Well...

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4 Full Trips Up And Down The M In Missoula

The M Trail is 1.2 miles long from the Phyllis Washington Park trailhead to the big white M. Thanks to a hiking calculator we found online, an average person could burn off about 418 calories hiking that distance. 3500 / 418 = 4 full trips up and down the M!

6 Trips Around Drinking Horse Mountain in Bozeman

Drinking Horse Mountain is over 2 miles long, and is all uphilll on the way to the summit over Gallatin County. The hiking calculator says this burns off 530 calories, so 6 round trips back-to-back would take care of that one bag of sugar you got on Halloween. Up for the challenge?

7 Solid Hours Swimming In Currents Aquatics In Missoula

A swimming calculator we found says you can burn off 490 calories swimming for exactly one hour. This is based off a one hundred eighty pound human doing front-crawl strokes, but you can enter different values if you want.

3,500 / 490 = over 7 hours of swimming. Does it sound worth it to you?

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72 Holes Of Golf At Northern Pines in Kalispell

I could have picked any golf course in Montana for this one, but I went with Northern Pines in Kalispell. If you were to walk the course from the back tees, it's 7,000 yards. The walking calculator says you'd burn 809 calories just from the leisurely stroll around the course, and of course there'd be more because you're...playing golf.

3,500 / 809 = over four full 18-hole games. And that doesn't count the steps you'd take if you left your putter on the last green or had to whack your ball multiple times to get out of a bunker!

While all these numbers are estimates, we hope it gives you an idea of the cost of a full bag of Halloween candy. While one of the most primal joys in a kid's life may be eating sweet things, maybe take it easy on the candy binge this year?