Oliver,
Yeah okay I see what you mean.  I checked both 1.60 and 1.61 in the debugger with debug libraries.  Both are broken if BOOST_USE_VALGRIND is set only on the user code, but for reasons, only 1.61 crashes (the way it is wrong gets swapped around, one way leaves ctx_ in the right spot, one doesn't).  Got it worked out.
Thanks for the hint this morning!

Jason