PILA: Berm Factory in Dust City

PILA!

What a day, where to start? Perfect berms and dusty-ness.

Four of us headed to Aosta to ride the resort of Pila, about an hours drive away including the Mont Blanc tunnel (€25 return with my tunnel pass, and €5.10 road tolls each way). A long slow gondola ride takes you to the main 'bike park' area. We did a couple of runs riding perfect downhill trails, with perfect berms, then decided to head down the 8km freeride 'home run' and get the gondola back up before it shut for lunch at 12:45. What a run, more berms, jumps, drops, roots, tight turns, and a whole ton of dust! AMAZING.

After ascending we then stopped right by the chair lift for a mega sized lunch. I had a gnocchi cheese feast and the other 3 lads had Gran Paradiso sized portions of tagliatelle ragu. All of this was washed down with an espresso to get us moving again.

More laps followed lunch as wed tried out the variations that litter the small, but diverse bike park area. There everything from gnarly world cup sections to flowing loamy singletrack.

Our arms were starting to feel it by now, Andy bought us all ice creams (thank you) and then we decided to head down the home run. This time we left even bigger gaps between each other to try and allow a glimpse of the trail surface through the dust!

AMAZING!

Andy from Bluebird Chalets on the IXS course step-up

Tom H (Numero97 Photography) railing one of the perfect berms

Rich E taking in some shade after a morning descent of the home run

Andy (L) & Tom H (R) not taking in the view of Mont Blanc

Rich railing another perfect berm

Andy on the home run dust fest

me on a dusty berm

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