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I've got this stiffness/pain in the backside of my knee, more in the calf muscle but probably in the tendons connecting the calf to the knee area. I've had this pain before many years ago when i first started hiking, but it's been awhile. For some reason it came back on a pretty easy hike a couple days ago, and I probably aggravated it with a 16 mi hike on Hayford Peak yesterday, since now I feel a click when I bend down or walk down stairs. I was hoping it's a muscular issue but it feels more and more like some kind of tendonitis at least the swelling up of the tendons. Has anyone else ever experienced something similar to this?

I used to be confused by that when I would get it intermittently. Now it's become clear that when I got tightness/stiffness in the back of the knee, it was just a manifestation of swelling in the knee joint capsule. And when it was significant enough, it would cause some odd effects down the upper calf that mimicked a muscle strain. Oh, and your clicking in the knee would be consistent with this explanation--it would suggest a cartilage issue that could throw off a little swelling.

To test this theory, try aggressively treating the knee for swelling (ice, elevation) and see if your calf doesn't miraculously feel better.

chugach mtn boy wrote:I used to be confused by that when I would get it intermittently. Now it's become clear that when I got tightness/stiffness in the back of the knee, it was just a manifestation of swelling in the knee joint capsule. And when it was significant enough, it would cause some odd effects down the upper calf that mimicked a muscle strain. Oh, and your clicking in the knee would be consistent with this explanation--it would suggest a cartilage issue that could throw off a little swelling.

To test this theory, try aggressively treating the knee for swelling (ice, elevation) and see if your calf doesn't miraculously feel better.

Thanks! I tried icing it all day today, then tomorrow's the big test on the mountain.