Feed your skiing addiction with a summer trip to New Zealand's Southern Alps

Seagulls that follow you down an alpine glacier as you savour ocean views; a live volcano that might one day do rather more than mess up your ski tracks; the prospect of having your packed lunch, windscreen wipers or even your car seat badly gored by the lunging beaks of a flock of keas (alpine parrots) – these are a few of my favourite things. And they send me to the other side of the world whenever I can, to the ski slopes of New Zealand.

Am I mad? Possibly. But I love quirky skiing, and you just don't get this calibre of "Lewis Carroll moment" in Val d'Isère or Verbier. At the start of last winter, in some parts of Europe you would barely have got any snow either. However, if your last ski season proved disappointing, it's not too late to put things right in the coming months. But you'll have to earn your turns with a long flight. There is only one place in the world where you can ski in dozens of English-speaking resorts during the British summer: New Zealand's Ka Tiritiri o te Moana (the Southern Alps).

It is, unfortunately, an awful long way to travel for a skiing holiday in resorts that are typically much smaller than Europe's big guns. So to sugar the seriously long-haul pill, those prepared to give New Zealand a go can easily build in an exotic stopover en route to ensure that it's not just New Zealand's skiing they are pinning their hopes on (and burning fossil fuels for).

How best to sum up the skiing in New Zealand? Not exactly epic, but great fun. Both the main islands offer skiing, with some exciting terrain at Whakapapa and Turoa on Mount Ruapehu – a volcano on North Island, with the biggest vertical drop in Australasia. But most of the country's skiing is on South Island, where it is claimed there are more mountains than in the European Alps – an assertion that's difficult to prove, but impressive nonetheless.

There are three main skiing gateways: the busy lakeside resort of Queenstown is close to two of New Zealand's most popular resorts: the Remarkables and Coronet Peak. The more tranquil backwater of Wanaka, a 120km journey from Queenstown, is possibly a better base: it provides access to Treble Cone, which by general consensus has South Island's most challenging terrain; and to Cardrona, with easier skiing but not without some extreme slopes. Christchurch, for all the world like some old English market town on the Canterbury Plains, is the gateway to Methven, a charming little place which provides the base for skiing at Mount Hutt. Here, the unpredictable weather has helped to give one of the country's best known resorts its rather unfair sobriquet of "Mount Shut".

New Zealand's highest and most spectacular peak is Mount Cook (3,744m), which these days rejoices in the more politically correct name of Aoraki (Maori for "Cloud Piercer"). Although there are no lifts, you can heliski there – and skiers with a guide can instead choose to be dropped off by light aircraft, with skids enabling them to land on a flat stretch of glacier.

New Zealand probably has more expert helicopter pilots than anywhere else, and heliskiing is available in a wide range of locations. The main centres are in the Harris Mountains and the Arrowsmith range near Methven, with a few more in the Thomson, Hector and Richardson ranges in the Southern Lakes region. You can also heliski at Mount Hutt and on the Fox Glacier.

At its best, the heliskiing in South Island comes close to the kind you can experience in British Columbia. However, unlike the Canadian operation – which typically involves spending a week in a remote lodge – the heliskiing in New Zealand is a daily event in winter. The vertical drops skied can easily reach 1,200m, but at the end of each day you escape from the snowline and return to the relative warmth and greenery of your Queenstown or Wanaka base.

At the other end of the scale are New Zealand's celebrated "club fields", individual ski areas run by not-for-profit ski clubs; a concept that has pretty much vanished from the rest of the planet. These small ski fields are huge fun, and very cheap. With the exception of Central Canterbury's Craigieburn Valley, which has some of the best skiing in the country, the names of these little areas are scarcely known in New Zealand, let alone in the UK. There are a dozen or so of them, and they resemble living museums of New Zealand's skiing history.

Anyone who took the unusual step of travelling all the way to New Zealand from Europe in order to ski a club field is likely to feel disappointed. But as an add-on to a wide-ranging trip, they provide an affordable yet rewarding experience. What club fields do have is something virtually unknown in the country's "fully fledged" commercial ski fields but essential in Europe's Alps: on-mountain accommodation (albeit more youth hostel than hotel).

By contrast, to get to the country's commercial fields, you simply drive to the slopes. It's important to remember, though, that the roads to reach some of the country's leading commercial ski areas are often basic. Indeed, the second half of the bleak 25km journey from Methven to Mount Hutt, has steep, exposed sections and unnerving drops.

Often the skiing in club fields is excellent, but typically there is little or no grooming and primitive lifts – usually powered by car or tractor engines. The lifts are hard to master, involving a metal device or " nutcracker" that is supposed to transfer the strain of pulling you up the mountain from the desperate grip of your hands to a belt round your waist. The uninitiated are liable to burn a hole in at least one ski glove.

Because club fields are run so basically, members pay low rates to ski there. They also keep the clubs' costs down by sharing daily duties such as cooking and cleaning. While club fields cannot on their own justify a journey to the opposite end of the world, skiing in general may just. Especially if you've had a miserable time in Europe's Alps.

GETTING THERE

The writer flew with Air New Zealand (0800 028 4149; www.airnewzealand.co.uk), which offers daily services from Heathrow to Auckland. Other airlines serving Auckland include Emirates (0870 243 2222; www.emirates.com), Cathay Pacific (020-8834 8888; www.cathaypacific.com), Japan Airlines (08457 747700; www.jal.com) and Korean Air (0800 413000; www.koreanair.com). To reduce the impact on the environment, you can buy an "offset" from Equiclimate (0845 456 0170; www.ebico.co.uk) or Pure (020-7382 7815; www.puretrust.org.uk).

SKIING THERE

Skiwi (00 64 3 358 4159; www.skiwi.co.nz ) can put together ski packages in 10 of New Zealand's resorts, including vehicle hire, lift passes and accommodation (but not travel to New Zealand). Ski passes for 11 of New Zealand's club fields can be obtained through Chill Out (00 64 3 318 4830; www.chillout.co.nz), and start at NZ$160 (£60) for three days.

MORE INFORMATION

Ski Club of Great Britain (020-8410 2000; www.skiclub.co.uk); Tourism New Zealand (09069 101010, calls £1/minute; www.newzealand.com)

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