Let’s face it, all this melting snow is a little depressing, isn’t it?

If you read this space often, that growing patch of grass on your lawn and the brown icy crust of a driveway really provides you no solace, does it?

Admit it. The end of ski season is at hand.

And even though the snowpack lay deep in all the key places, it’s time to call last chair for another season of Happy Trails.

What have we learned, other than it’s soon time to trade white fluffy joy for weeks of wind and mud?

That Maine’s ski resorts remain in a period of secular change with regard to ownership.

I’m not even talking about the $70 million deal that brought Boyne to us. I’m more concerned about the fate of Mt. Abram and its bottom-feeding $2 million asking price. The fate of Eaton, a central Maine mainstay that’s been fighting a lot of uphill battles. And the fate of Big Squaw, a Maine skiing jewel with a negligent owner.

Maine’s economic history is essentially a story of colonization, how outside institutions harnessed and administrated our natural resources from afar. Let’s hope the Maine ski industry doesn’t suffer the same future, and that the best of our smaller, family-owned institutions remain in hands committed to benefit Mainers. We’ve also learned about the benefits of a long, snowy winter.

A year ago, U.S. ski resorts posted a 7 percent drop in visitors because of fickle weather.

But this year, “It’s actually been one of those rare years where it’s been winter from coast to coast,” Michael Berry, president of the National Ski Areas Association, told the Associated Press recently. “It may very well be a record year.”

The industry’s record for skier visits is 58.9 million, set in 2005-06. (A skier visit is an industry measure of one lift ticket used for one day). With one of the earliest openings and snowiest winters ever, and a very lucrative holiday period, by most anecdotal accounts this season may have been a record-breaking one in Maine, as well.

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But maybe you’re just getting started, as spring in the mountains offers the sturdiest snow, the best weather and — if you’re savvy — the cheapest turns of the ski season. First, if you’re a pass holder at Sugarloaf or Sunday River, you must know that you can benefit from a very unique partnership between Boyne and Valle Nevado ski resort in Chile.

The “Southern Sister Connection” gives Maine Pass holders a free seven-day lift ticket to the Chilean resort, where ski season runs June through October.

I’ve skied in Chile, and take it from me: If someone offers you a free lift ticket to ski there, get one. Even with airfares at historic highs, Chile is a modern, very Westernized country with great people, a favorable exchange rate and very high, very skiable mountains. It’s a great destination.

Santiago is only about a four-hour flight from Miami. And Valle Nevado is only 1 1/2 hours from the Santiago International Airport.

Here today, skiing tomorrow. In August.

Check www.vallenevado.com for more information on Valle Nevado Ski Resort in Chile. Another familiar option much more feasible and closer to home is the East’s most famous backcountry alp: Mount Washington.

Join the hordes of backcountry beach bums hiking Tuckerman’s Ravine, but know your etiquette and always get up-to-the-hour weather and avalanche bulletins, available at http://timefortuckerman.com

The avalanche bulletin at http://www.tuckerman.org/avalanche is just about the most thoroughly researched and eminently understandable pieces of snowpack analysis I’ve ever read.

For those with climbing skins, transceivers and ice axes still in storage, it’s time to have at it. The best conditions of the year may still be at hand.

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Otherwise, keep those skis dry, unwind the DIN settings on those bindings, do those squats and inline skating exercises — and wait with me as one ski season ends and the endless one continues on, forever.

Bob Mentzinger is a former ski patroller reachable at rmentzinger@centralmaine.com.