Pila

The advantage nearly everyone names is the gondola straight out of Aosta: twenty minutes from the city to the slopes, with a panorama on the way up. The terrain faces north, so snow keeps better here than at neighbouring areas, and surface quality gets specific praise. The trail mix is varied and well suited to confident intermediates, and the lift pass good value. Midweek there are barely any queues, and village restaurants earn good words.

Criticism still goes to lifts that remain old and slow, though renewal is under way and one chairlift has given way to an eight-seat gondola. Parts of the infrastructure are called run down. A specific complaint is the bottleneck on the piste just above the village, dangerous where flows of skiers converge. At weekends and holidays the place changes: locals and day visitors from Milan arrive, lift queues grow and the village is called crowded.