SNOW RIDERS AND SURFERS want to love each other. Really they do. You should've heard them the first night we met up in New Zealand.

Jamie Sterling, massaging a weather report out of his iPhone, put forth the question always asked of heli-skiers: "So you guys jump right out of helicopters?"

No, Cattabriga-Alosa kindly answered, the pom-pom on his retro green Smith beanie bouncing agreeably: "The helicopters land on the snow, then we get out."

The surfers talked about waiting for waves; skier Dana Flahr—blond and boyish—noted, "Sometimes we look at digital photos for two days memorizing safe points and landmarks before dropping in."

Surfer Mark Visser, longhaired and tan (before his flu): "That's like us a bit. You need to know where to get out. When you go under the wave, you see air pockets and swim toward them. The key is to always stay calm."

Snowboarder Johan Olofsson: "That's the way I feel, too."

Despite making nice, we eventually choose our own tribes in Wanaka. The saltwater types stay at one rented house, and the frozen-water ones stay at another, in a different neighborhood. One day, the watermen abandon the snow boys. Harro has noted a massive swell aiming for Papatowai, a point on the rugged southeast coast separated from Antarctica by masses of angry water. "I'm a firm believer that you make your own luck," says Harro. And luck is a freak swell. So he pulls another bootlegger turn on the schedule.

Several hours' drive from Wanaka, the Papatowai trip takes all the surfers and camera ops away for a day and a half. "The surfer duuuudes—they don't hang out with us … We're not rad enough," one skier jokes. In truth, the snowphiles would be scared shitless at Pap. The waves roll in 30 feet high, with 40-foot faces. "I can shoot small-wave, high-performance, and snow park," Harro says, "but give me the biggest swell or the biggest mountain, where you can use your brain to develop a strategy to survive, and that's where I get my own fix of adrenaline. That's what I live for."

Pap breaks so huge that the surfers decide to tow in with a Jet Ski. And the water is so cold, Sterling will later report, "it was hard to hold on to the towrope." Mark Visser, still sick, surfs three waves until the cold wrecks him and he has to stop. Meanwhile, back in Wanaka, the snow guys hire a plane at the airfield for a reconnaissance mission, scouting jumps and runouts. To scope their powder lines, they pay the pilots about $750. As for me, utterly bereft of sponsorship in this adventure-mad nation, I decide to rent a cheap mountain bike for $20, helmet and pump included.