Ah, sorry, I was following a different thread because the updater was choking on the note about this that I found in /etc/config/updater:
in this post:
After I changed
option branch 'stable-new'
to
option branch 'stable'
and ran update.sh. I could no longer get into my router (as in the beginning of this thread).
If I have to reflash the router that would be disappointing, but I’ll try the rollback and see where that gets me.