Perdita Stevens wrote:
Thanks for the quick follow-up!

- long slow cable car to get from Aosta town to the Pila slopes [...]

That's why I said Pila rather than Aosta, sorry I wasn't clear. We'd
definitely stay up at Pila, and yes, both the hotels I mentioned are there.

Good.

- terrain is very limited and gentle, most of the runs would not be
rated red in France

That's OK for us; good, in fact. I was more worried about having too little
gentleness. (My husband may get a bit bored, but he'll live :-)

Ah, OK !

- I doubt if it would be very snow-sure at New Year

That's more of an issue; though it might just tell us we should go in Feb.

I may be wrong, I haven't checked, take a look at the SCGB snow records,
they may be no worse than anyone else...

- Don't know about weekends being busy - there are a lot of other
higher/bigger resorts in the same valley. ALso Italians tend to start
late and have long lunches so as long as you are out on first lift and
take early/short lunches you can avoid a lot of Qs. However, Interski
are very big there, so there's a chance that it will be crammed with
Brit. school parties during school hols. OTOH this might mean some
decent english-speaking instruction for your 5 yo..

Interesting, thanks for the Interski tip - I'll look into that. Should also
investigate whether our son's half term is the same week as everyone else's
- I think it may be the week before, which might help...

- We prefer Gressoney and La Thuile, but as we live out here and kids
are now adults we tend to DIY hols and don't need ski school for nippers
so I don't know which tour operators go there. There's also Cervinia
(only skied there from Zermatt, necer stayed there) or Courmayeur, but
that's not ski in/out.

We wouldn't go with a tour operator, probably; we prefer to organise
ourselves, go by train etc. We've been to La Thuile and enjoyed it, but
IIRR the children's slopes are at the bottom of the mountain with
everything else up a bottleneck, and no ski-in ski-out (we stayed at the
Planibel apartments which seemed to be about the most convenient there
was). Gressoney I've thought about but we've not been there; might look
into that some more.

We've been there twice and enjoyed it both times, but like La Thuile
(your memory sounds about right) not exactly ski in/out if you're not
good strong skiers. The chair up from the main part of the resort has
some nice runs but it can be quite challenging to get over to the other
side. Alternatively there's a bus that goes up there (I think).

We stayed at the Hotel Lo Sciattolo which we didn't think much of
(food), but last year we were at the Dufour which was excellent for
rooms, location, bar and most of all food with good choices.

Not sure how you'd get up there without a car though...