Some years it's risky to plan a ride late in the season-risky in that you're never quite sure what the snow conditions will be like. Will the snow be spring-like conditions where you can ride just about anywhere on "hero" snow or will it be starting to get "rotten" and fall out from under your sled as you ride?
We count ourselves lucky if get any sort of powder conditions late in the season, like March and April. And if the powder is several inches or even feet deep that late in the season, well, that's died-and-gone-to-heaven kind of riding.
What we experienced the very end of last March in Colorado's northern Routt County was definitely a slice of heaven. We had two days of untracked powder riding where the fluff was anywhere from a few inches of new to coming over the hood. We had to look at the calendar once the ride was over to make sure that it was indeed March 28-29.
Yes, spring riding was great over many parts of the West last winter and we heard reports of decent riding well into May and even June. But that doesn't diminish just how good the riding was in Routt County last March. In fact, after we finished our ride, it snowed several more inches so we certainly didn't use up all the good snow-although we sure tried.
For the record, there was 88 inches (7.3 feet) of snow on the ground at the Lost Dog snotel site (elevation 9,320 feet) at the end of March.