By Jenn Fields For the Boulder DailyCamera

So we never took the skis out of the back.

The next weekend, I headed up to Rocky Mountain National Park again. Visibility was low because it was dumping. After we skinned up the calm valley, past Trail Ridge Road and treeline, I lost track of my skis and boots in the hallelujah puff of fresh powder.

The Estes Park forecast for that first weekend called for single-digit wind speeds. Where did I go wrong? Longtime backcountry skiers seem to have a sixth sense figuring out where to go (or not go) in any given conditions. I started backcountry skiing this winter -- how's a newbie to know?

Do I need snow tarot cards, or is there just a Web site I'm missing?

I learned from an expert -- the forecaster behind climbinglife.com/weather -- that I'm missing several Web sites.

Dan Gottas' day job is research meteorologist, and his professional knowledge is handy for his favorite past-times, such as skiing, trail running, scrambling and so on.

"I'm more of a wilderness freak than anything else," he said. "I just love anything that takes me out there."

After years of field research on the variable conditions in the mountains, Gottas has found that the sixth sense for snow is a combination of knowledge and experience.

"Really, the information comes from me going out and observing this stuff and making note of it, so I can start building my own climatology in my head," he said. He added that anyone can do this by returning to the same areas over time. "You could learn a basin in a season."

Gottas sat me down with topo maps and diagrams and started with local-mountain weather 101: The atmosphere's westerly winter flow hits the mountains and sinks down the eastern side, which is why we often have windy winters here. The effects of this flow and other large-scale events, like a storm, are compounded by terrain features: peaks, valleys and even trees. The wind drops snow on the lee, or far, side of these features.

"If you were to be up on the top of Hidden Valley, on the ridge, the wind would be pounding in your face, right?" Gottas said as he pointed to the topo. "It's going to be consistently blowing, but there's going to be a point in here" -- Gottas pointed east, to the middle of the valley -- "where it's going to be more gusty and erratic. And that's basically your flow-separation zone, which is more turbulent, and it allows whatever snow that has been transported by the wind to deposit in this area."

In other words, powder stash.

The trick is figuring out not just where, but when. Some wind brings snow; too much scours it away. Gottas broke out wind-speed charts for my first try at Hidden Valley. Winds at 7,500 feet, the elevation of Estes Park, were around 7 mph, as promised. But a little higher, it was a different story.

"If you'd woken up that morning and brought up this plot, you'd see that at Hidden Valley, between 9,000 and 12,000 feet -- look at what's going on there." He pointed to flags indicating winds in the 40 to 50 mph range. "This is cranking."

Oops. But no worries -- the sweet spot isn't always easy to predict, even for the expert. Gottas said he gets skunked, too.

"You look at this map and say, 'OK, based on my experience and based on these scales, I think that this is going to be a great spot,'" Gottas said. "And you go there and it completely sucks -- there's something else going on."

All of this calls for more field research.