oh and this is inside of a side menu, i know that there are issues with side menu and $ionicHistory but from what i’ve read those only apply to menu-close vs menu-toggle causing your history to get jumbled.
actually it turned out that i was working with the wrong controller. i was in the controller for the page inside of my side menu when i should have been putting this code in the side menu’s controller since that’s where back gets called.
thanks for your help though. just trying that back example made me realize i was thinking about my controllers the wrong way.