The altcoin season is still long because usually the altcoin season will occur if the bitcoin price goes to a new all time high,
whereas at this time the Bitcoin price is still trying to stay at $ 30k that is good news, but if not it will be bad news for altcoins.
if you want to buy altcoins I can say this is the right time.
i think things just different this time around, though bitcoin hasn't even reached some all time high but some of the altcoins have been having some great time.
there are so many coins that have scored massive profits and increase like the second layer solution to ethereum.
but all in all only very few are actually having bullruns meanwhile the rest are just don't really have that bullrun and instead only following the path of bitcoin or in other words heavily influenced by bitcoin.
so I guess we haven't really reached the altcoin season yet as you said, and might be still a long way before we even encounter ones.