Christmas 2011
This was our first visit to Pila; preferring to ski either during Christmas or just before over the last 20+ years. The hotel was very good with pleasant staff and good facilities and good food with unlimited free wine at evening dinner! "Etoiles de Neige" - 100m from a chair lift and 200m from the main lift station, accessed via a moving walkway from just by the hotel. The snow conditions were perfect but a few of the lifts had not opened due to a big dump of snow just before we arrived; the main pistes were well groomed providing easy cruising skiing and two or three awesome blacks if required. The slopes were not crowded and we never queued for more than a few minutes all week. The pisteurs and lift staff were courteous and polite and there's a big cable car that foot passengers can take from Pila centre to the main slopes. I believe that Pila can be crowded at weekends as the Torinese flock to the slopes if the weather's good. The resort is compact, all pistes leading back to the main resort centre so getting lost is pretty well impossible. If you want the hectic nightlife then this resort is not for you.
The nursery slopes looked ideal for beginners and young children and the slopes were well served by restaurants and bars without the eye watering prices encountered in other resorts throughout the Alps; I mention no other countries but suffice it to say we now ski three times a year in Italy and have noticed the numbers of French people skiing in Italy grows noticeably year by year.
Should one wish for a "day off" then Aosta is a cable car journey away about 17 minutes (included in your lift pass) and is well worth the visit even if for only a half day.
We would certainly ski here again but would suggest that for the expert skier wanting to travel far and wide then they would run out of pistes after a couple of days.
Dave Stephenson Jan 2012.