The season’s nearing an end and you just didn’t ever get around to booking a week on the piste. Is it too late? The short answer is: no, of course it isn’t. In some resorts, the season still has two months to run and, provided you take a few simple precautions, you can bag yourself a bright, white burst of adventure long after the daffodils are over back home.

In fact, many of the best skiing and snowboarding experiences are to be had at the end of the season. The days are longer, the sun is stronger, and the slopes are warmer — not a minor consideration this winter, when some resorts have seen the mercury slip well below the –20C mark. The snow’s deeper, too, because it’s had longer to accumulate, which means more off-piste runs are open. Add to this tumbling holiday prices and thinning crowds, and you’ve got a pretty tempting proposition.

But before you run to your computer to bag the first discounted, late-booking ski package you can find, a word of caution. There is a flip side to the late season, and it comes courtesy of those rising temperatures. In March, I’ve snowboarded in the pouring rain at 2,500 metres in Courchevel, in France, and water-skied my way down the pistes of Maria Alm, in Austria. With luck, every day will see clear skies, thigh-deep powder and blissfully empty slopes — but you do take the risk of the occasional soggy afternoon too.

It’s not entirely luck, though. You can maximise the number of perfect moments — and minimise the uncomfortable ones — if you take a few simple precautions. Here are the most important.

1 AIM HIGH

In the Alps, reliable late-season conditions are hard to find beneath 2,000 metres, and unless a resort has plenty of slopes above that — ideally around the 3,000-metre mark — give it a wide berth. Val d’Isère is my own favourite, but Zermatt, Cervinia and St Moritz are also good bets. Further east, in Austria, you can ski a little lower, thanks to the generally colder temperatures and excellent snowfall this season. St Anton, Sölden and Obergurgl are all worth considering. Crystal (0870 160 6040, www.crystalholidays.co.uk) and Inghams (020 8780 4433, www.inghams.co.uk) offer holidays in nearly all of these resorts, but check out some of the smaller chalet specialists, too, including YSE (0845 122 1414, www.yseski.co.uk) and, in Val d’Isère, VIP (0870 112 3119, www.vip-chalets.com).

2 CROSS THE POND

Another option is to ski America. In the central and northern Rockies, conditions this season are even better than they are in Austria, with many resorts already close to the yearly snowfall averages. Two resorts over there have particularly impressed me this winter: Breckenridge, in Colorado, home to the highest ski lift in the northern hemisphere (a dizzying 3,963 metres) and one of the world’s mightiest — and most terrifying — terrain parks; and Big Sky, in Montana, a mountain that defies all the usual clichés about American terrain being too easy (see my blogs on both at www.timesonline.co.uk/travel). They are also extremely kind to beginners, however. Ski Independence (0845 31 3030, www.ski-i.com), offers packages to both.

3 BOOK A GUIDE

Wherever you go, you need to get someone to show you around. That way, you’ll discover which slopes soften up first in the morning (after the overnight freeze) and which will be the least slushy on a warm afternoon. In America, this kind of advice comes for free, thanks to the ski-hosting programme run by most resorts. The Alps are only slowly catching on to this idea, and in most resorts you’ll have to hire a guide, which for a group of four to six will set you back £150-£220 a day (booked through the local ski school). Or you can join the Ski Club of Great Britain (020 8410 2000, www.skiclub.co.uk). Membership costs £49 for adults and gives you access to the Ski Club reps, who offer daily guiding services for club members in many of the world’s best resorts — non-members can get a day’s guiding for free by way of a sample of the service.

4 HIRE BETTER SKIS

Most rental shops offer several grades of quality and price. You need their prestige/professional range (£70-£90 per week): not just because the skis are better overall, but because this is where you’ll usually find the greatest range of models and widths. Swapping between them is no problem, and if the snow gets soft, or you have a fresh dump of powder, you can swap your carvers for something fatter and more stable.

5 CONSIDER SNOWBOARDING

Boarding was one of the biggest success stories of the Turin Olympics, and if you were inspired by the heroics in the half-pipe or on the snowboard cross course, late season is one of the best times to learn — snowboarding was designed for soft snow, and slush is much more fun on a board than skis. Ideally, I’d head to an American resort such as Breckenridge (see above), but there are good boarding schools in Europe — such as Stoked, in Zermatt (00 41 27 967 7020, www.stoked.ch; three 2½-hour lessons cost £75).

6 BAG A LATE-BOOKING DEAL

Finally, don’t book a package without checking the late-booking deals first. Discounts come thick and fast at this time of year, and you can find a good range of them by visiting websites such as www.ski-holidays.com or talking to a specialist travel agent such as Ski Solutions (020 7471 7700, www.skisolutions.com). Don’t imagine that the mass-market operators are the only ones offering discounts: this is a great time of year to sample a little luxury for less. Descent International (020 7384 3854, www.descent.co.uk) has late-booking discounts of several thousand pounds on a range of its super-posh chalets in the Alps, as well as free lift passes.

KNOW YOUR SNOW

For the latest news on conditions for skiers and boarders, visit www.timesonline.co.uk/snowreports

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