What do you do when two hiking authors give different recommendations
on which of two hikes to do? I even talked with a guy at the creek crossing.

Between hiking the Railroad (RR) Grade or Park Butte I was blown away
from going to 6,200 ft on the RR Grade and traversing over to see the
Deming Glacier. Don't see many ice falls like this in the contiguous US.

Unfortunately,since the late 80s most of the ice tongue has melted away.
(During this time Mt. Baker has lost around a third of its glacial mass).
In a matter of years (as opposed to decades), all of the tongue up to the
throat should melt away. This amount of loss of ice has never happened before.

This is happening world wide, everywhere, and the rate of melt is increasing.
All the countries with glaciers are monitoring their glaciers and coordinating
and sharing their results. Starting basically at the same time
(mid-80s to early 90s) most every glaciers in the world began losing mass and
retreating. It's not a coincidence. While the loss in the PNW glaciers are on
the order of meters of glacier per year, in Greenland its tens to hundreds of
square miles per year. To me its incomprehensible.