Wild camping on the Ärmigchnubel: two bans, and no gap between them

What do these mean?

Illegal A specific rule bans it, usually with a fine, and it can be enforced. Sleep somewhere else.

Not allowed No real place to camp here. A gated site, a developed area, or nowhere sensible to lie down, even if no fine is attached.

It depends You can sleep here, but there's a condition first: ask the landowner, book a spot, stay inside a set zone, or use a bivvy instead of a tent. The report says which.

Tolerated No rule clearly allows or bans it, but a single night is accepted in practice and nobody enforces against it. Normal for high bivouacs above the treeline.

Legal Camping one night is fine here. Either a rule allows it, or we checked every law and found nothing against it. Still: pitch late, leave early, no trace.

Which summit this is

There is exactly one Ärmigchnubel in Switzerland: a summit of 2'411.8 m in Kandergrund, canton Bern, on the Giesegrat, the ridge that separates the Kiental from the Kandertal. It sits on the traverse that runs from the Gehrihorn over the Sattelhorn to the Ärmighore, and the marked path network stops well short of it.⁵

That matters for the question, because this is not a place anyone reaches by accident. The nearest marked hiking path is 1'979 m away, the nearest registered building 3'178 m, and Kandersteg 5'236 m. It is remote, pathless, above the tree line, and the sort of ridge where an overnight stop is a reasonable thing to consider. The answer is still no, and the reason is worth understanding rather than just obeying.⁵

The cantonal ban, and it names bivouac

The pin lies inside the wildlife rest zone "Gehrihorn", zone 2, recorded on the federal portal as rechtsverbindlich (legally binding) with a protection period of 1 January to 31 December. Its legal basis is the Bernese ordinance on wildlife protection, BSG 922.63.¹

Annex 2, item 11, sets the measures for that object, and it does so for all three zones at once:

"Kategorie F: Wintersport und Winterwandern sind ausserhalb der bezeichneten Routen verboten. Von den bezeichneten Routen aus ist der Zugang zum Eiskletter­gebiet Breitwangflue erlaubt. Freies/wildes Campieren und Biwakieren sind verboten."Verordnung über den Wildtierschutz (WTSchV), BSG 922.63, Anhang 2 Ziffer 11 "Gehrihorn", Schutzmassnahmen, Alle Zonen (1, 2, 3). In English: winter sports and winter hiking are prohibited off the designated routes; access to the Breitwangflue ice climbing area from those routes is permitted; free and wild camping and bivouacking are prohibited.

Two things in that sentence do the work. Bivouacking is named, alongside camping, so the reading that saves a tentless night under some other cantons' wording is closed here. And there is no season on it: the winter sports clause is seasonal in effect, the camping clause is not, and the protection period on the register runs the full year.¹

Do not read the category letter alone. The same annex gives another object a category F that is expressly seasonal, running only from 1 September to 30 November. The letter is a container, and what it contains is written out per object. For the Gehrihorn it contains an unqualified camping and bivouac ban.³

The ordinance's own machinery lines up behind that: article 3 paragraph 1 letter f defines category F as restrictions on disturbing activities from leisure, sport, tourism and the military; article 3 paragraph 2 sends you to annex 2 for what applies where; and article 4 says the perimeter is fixed by digital geodata, which is the layer this article queried.³

The commune adds nothing either way. Kandergrund has no Polizeireglement at all, and its building regulation, in the 2021 version with the 2023 and 2026 additions, contains no camping provision anywhere in 76'338 characters. Its two apparent hits are worth naming so nobody repeats them: "Lager" is the material storage zone, and the single "Campingplätze" is an example of hazard-exposed buildings. Its article 34 on wildlife protection points back at the cantonal ordinance, and only for hunting.⁶

The seam: two perimeters that share this summit

Here is what makes this mountain different from every other prohibition in this file. Usually a boundary has an outside. This one does not.

The rest zone perimeter has a vertex 1.1 m from the gazetteer summit point. Walk out from the summit on any bearing from north clockwise through east and south to northwest and you leave the rest zone within 1 to 5 metres. Only the southwest arc stays inside, and there it runs 2.7 to 3.0 km into the body of the zone. In other words the boundary is drawn to the summit itself, and the zone hangs off it to the southwest.⁵

So step northeast and you are out of the rest zone. You are also, 0.9 metres from the summit point, inside federal game reserve number 3, "Kiental", 8'392.1 hectares of it.²

Classify the ground properly and the picture is unambiguous. Taking all three zones of the rest zone and the federal reserve together, and sampling a 2 km box at 25 m spacing:

• Federal game reserve Kiental: 60.8% of samples
• Rest zone Gehrihorn, zone 2: 32.1%
• Rest zone Gehrihorn, zone 1: 7.0%
• Outside both: 0.0%. Zero of 6'561 points.

The nearest ground that belongs to neither regime is 2'300 m west, at LV95 2'618'158 / 1'155'320. Everything closer than that, in every direction, is inside one ban or the other.⁵

And the federal side is not the lighter one

The Kiental reserve is typed "area with partial protection provisions", which reads like a lighter regime and is not one. The federal ordinance defines partially protected areas as those where populations of roe deer, chamois, red deer and wild boar may be regularly regulated or reduced. It is a statement about culling, not about visitors.²

The camping rule sits in article 5 paragraph 1, which the ordinance introduces as the general provisions applying in game reserves:

"Das freie Zelten und Campieren ist verboten. Vorbehalten bleibt die Benutzung offizieller Zeltplätze. Die Kantone können Ausnahmen bewilligen."Verordnung über die eidgenössischen Jagdbanngebiete (VEJ), SR 922.31, art. 5 para. 1 let. e. In English: free tenting and camping are prohibited; the use of official campsites is reserved; the cantons may grant exceptions.

If you want proof the drafter knew how to spare partial-protection areas from a rule, it is one letter above: letter d, on weapons, expressly lets the cantons permit exceptions "für Gebiete mit partiellem Schutz". Letter e carries no such carve-out. The camping ban applies in Kiental in full.⁴

Two sides, two different penalties

Because the seam separates a cantonal instrument from a federal one, the two sides of this summit are policed differently. That is worth knowing, and it is not an invitation to pick.

On the rest zone side (southwest), there is no fixed penalty at all. The tariff list of the federal fixed penalty ordinance prices camping only "in eidgenössischen Jagdbanngebieten", so it does not reach a cantonal rest zone. What applies instead is the cantonal hunting act: a fine of up to 20'000 francs for disregarding binding orders protecting wild animals, with attempt and complicity also punishable. That is a ceiling and not a price list, and it is set by a court rather than handed over on the spot.⁴³

On the game reserve side (northeast), there is a price. The fixed penalty ordinance, annex 2 item 12005, tariffs "Freies Zelten oder Campieren in eidgenössischen Jagdbanngebieten" at 150 francs. Behind it stands the federal hunting act, article 18 paragraph 1 letter e, with a ceiling of 20'000 francs, and paragraph 3 makes the negligent case punishable too, so "I did not know where the line was" is not an answer.⁴

One honest note on doors. The federal provision ends "Die Kantone können Ausnahmen bewilligen", so an exception is legally conceivable on the reserve side, granted by the canton. The cantonal ordinance contains no equivalent permit route for its category F restrictions; the permits it does regulate concern events and wildlife keeping. Neither is a mechanism a hiker uses for one night, and this article is not going to present them as one.²³

The argument you are about to make has already been made

The obvious objection to all of this is that a single night in a bivvy bag on a bare ridge at 2'400 m harms nothing. It is a reasonable objection. It has also already been put to the canton, publicly and at scale, and it lost.

When Bern revised its wildlife protection rules, a petition against what it called disproportionate restrictions in the Kandertal ran from 8 June to 26 August 2021 and collected 3'147 signatures. It lists "Gehrihorn (11)" among the affected areas, notes that "mit dem eidgenössischen Wildtierschutzgebiet Kiental hat das Kandertal jetzt schon viele Einschränkungen zu tragen", and then makes precisely the argument above:

"Ebenfalls ist Camping bzw. Biwakiern absolut verboten. Wir sind der Ansicht, dass mehrtägiges Campieren nicht erlaubt sein muss, aber wir sehen nicht ein, wieso eine Nacht Biwakieren/Campieren verboten sein soll."Public petition against restrictions from wildlife protection areas in the Kandertal and canton Bern, 2021. In English: camping and bivouacking are likewise absolutely prohibited. We take the view that multi-day camping need not be permitted, but we do not see why one night of bivouacking or camping should be prohibited.

The ordinance in force today still says what it said. Three thousand people asked for exactly the exception you would want, in the right forum, and the camping and bivouac sentence survived. Whatever you think of that outcome, it settles what the rule means: the one-night reading was considered and not adopted.⁷

The reason the canton gives is in the object sheet itself. This is Wildraum 15, protected as Gehrihorn since 1981 and part of a larger protected block since 1911, 1'896 hectares across Frutigen, Reichenbach and Kandergrund. The sensitive species listed are chamois, ibex, red deer, roe deer, black grouse, ptarmigan and rock partridge, and the ground you would sleep on at 2'400 m is exactly the bare, open terrain the grouse and ptarmigan use.¹

What is actually possible here

Not a bivouac on this ridge, and not by walking a bit further. That is the honest answer, and it is worth being blunt about because the usual workaround genuinely does not exist. The flat ground near the summit is real, and all of it is spoken for: the best shelf, 0.6 degrees at 2'323.5 m, 334 m west-northwest, is in the rest zone; the 1.3 degree shelf at 2'331.7 m, 361 m northeast, and the 1.9 degree one 261 m out are both in the game reserve.⁵

To be outside both you have to go 2'300 m west, which on this terrain means dropping off the ridge entirely and losing the reason you came. At that point you are no longer bivouacking on the Ärmigchnubel, you are camping somewhere else, and that somewhere else needs its own check for landowner and communal rules.

The version of this trip that works

Do the ridge as a day. The Giesegrat traverse is a full outing on its own, the summit reads 11.7 degrees where you would stand and the surrounding box has a median slope of 23.8 degrees, so this was never comfortable ground anyway: only 4.7% of it lies under 10 degrees. Start early from the valley, take the crest, and come down to a bed.⁵

If you want a legal night out in this exact area, the question to research is not this summit but the ground beyond the two perimeters, and the honest way to settle it is the same method used here: check the two layers at your intended coordinates before you go, not after. The perimeters are published and both are queryable.¹²

And whatever you do here in winter, note that the rest zone additionally bars winter sports and winter hiking off the designated routes, with the one express exception of reaching the Breitwangflue ice climbing area from those routes. That is a separate rule from the camping one, and it catches ski tourers who never intended to sleep anywhere.¹

General rules for wild camping

You are on a ridge where two authorities have drawn perimeters that meet. Nothing here is a grey area, so the only useful rules are the ones that keep the place worth protecting:

• No fire. An open fire has no place in the mountains. A gas stove is enough.
• Pitch late, strike early. Set up towards evening, gone again early. A bivouac is one night, not a base camp.
• Leave no rubbish. Everything you carry up you carry down, organic scraps and toilet paper included.
• At least 50 metres from any water for the big business, so you do not foul what people and livestock drink.
• Stay small and quiet. A small group, no speaker, no drone, dogs on the lead, and the alp staff's word goes.

Disclaimer

Everything here is a journalistic assessment as of September 2026, from the sources linked below, and it is not legal advice.

Illegal is the verdict on two independent grounds. The cantonal rest zone covers the summit and names both camping and bivouacking without a season; the federal game reserve begins under a metre away and prohibits free camping. Either one alone would settle it.

The boundary geometry was measured from the published perimeters, not estimated. The summit point lies 1.1 m inside the rest zone perimeter and 0.9 m outside the game reserve perimeter, which is well within consumer GPS error. That is a reason to treat the whole summit as covered, not a reason to gamble on which side you are standing.

The 2021 petition is cited as what it is: a public petition, not a legal source. It is included because it shows the one-night argument was made in the right place and did not change the rule.

Frequently asked questions

Leon Helg

Swiss filmmaker and software developer. Spends his free time in the Swiss Alps and maps his favourite spots for Hikebeast. Posts as @leon.helg on Instagram and TikTok.

Swiss Guide Wildcamping Checker Color Grading

Sources

1. Wildlife rest zone perimeter and status, queried 4 September 2026 at LV95 2'620'458 / 1'155'320, terrain surface 2'411.8 m, commune Kandergrund. The federal wildlife rest zone layer returns the object "Gehrihorn (Nr. 1011.Zone 2)", recorded as rechtsverbindlich, protection period "01.01. - 31.12.", legal basis "BSG 922.63 - Verordnung über den Wildtierschutz (WTSchV)", with the additional information field reading "Wintersport und Winterwandern sind ausserhalb der bezeichneten Routen verboten. Freies/wildes Campieren und Biwakieren sind verboten. Der Betrieb von zivilen, unbemannten Luftfahrzeugen (z.B. Drohnen, Modellflugzeuge) ist verboten." An envelope query within 4 km returns exactly three polygons for this object, zones 1, 2 and 3, all rechtsverbindlich and all with the same year-round protection period. The cantonal object sheet linked from that record gives: "Objektblatt: Gehrihorn (Nr.11)", communes Frutigen, Reichenbach and Kandergrund, Wildraum 15, area 1'896 ha, "Beschlussjahr: 1981 als Gehrihorn vorher ab 1911 Teilgebiet von Kander-Kien-Suldtal", and reproduces the category F measures for "Alle Zonen (1, 2, 3)". geofiles.be.ch. ↩
2. Verordnung über die eidgenössischen Jagdbanngebiete (VEJ), SR 922.31, in the version in force. Art. 5 "Artenschutz" para. 1 introduces the general provisions applying in game reserves, of which let. e reads: "Das freie Zelten und Campieren ist verboten. Vorbehalten bleibt die Benutzung offizieller Zeltplätze. Die Kantone können Ausnahmen bewilligen." Let. d, on the carrying, keeping and use of weapons and traps, expressly permits the cantons to allow exceptions "für Gebiete mit partiellem Schutz", a carve-out that let. e does not contain. The ordinance defines partially protected areas as "Gebiete, in denen Bestände von Rehen, Gemsen, Rothirschen und Wildschweinen regelmässig reguliert oder reduziert werden können", and requires the cantons to draw up culling plans for them. Art. 2 provides that the inventory forms part of the ordinance and is published electronically by the Federal Office for the Environment. fedlex.admin.ch. ↩
3. Verordnung über den Wildtierschutz (WTSchV), BSG 922.63, canton Bern. Annex 1 lists "Gehrihorn (Nr. 11)", Wildraum 15, categories C/E/F. Annex 2 item 11 "Gehrihorn" sets out the protection measures for "Alle Zonen (1, 2, 3)": category C permits hunting from 1 September to 28 February according to the annual determinations; category E requires dogs on the lead from 1 March to 31 July; category F reads "Wintersport und Winterwandern sind ausserhalb der bezeichneten Routen verboten. Von den bezeichneten Routen aus ist der Zugang zum Eisklettergebiet Breitwangflue erlaubt. Freies/wildes Campieren und Biwakieren sind verboten. Der Betrieb von zivilen, unbemannten Luftfahrzeugen (z.B. Drohnen, Modellflugzeuge) ist verboten." No season attaches to the camping sentence. Art. 3 para. 1 let. f defines category F as "Einschränkungen von störenden Aktivitäten insbesondere aus den Bereichen Freizeit, Sport, Tourismus und Militär", art. 3 para. 2 refers to annex 2 for the measures valid in a given area, and art. 4 provides that the areas are delimited by digital geodata and the descriptions in annex 2. That the category letter must be read per object was verified in the same annex, where another object carries a category F limited to 1 September to 30 November. Cantonal sanction: Gesetz über Jagd und Wildtierschutz (JWG), BSG 922.11, art. 31 para. 1: "Soweit nicht bundesrechtliche Strafnormen zur Anwendung gelangen, wird mit Busse bis zu 20'000 Franken bestraft, ... c wer die verbindlichen Anordnungen zum Schutz von Wildtieren missachtet", with para. 2 extending liability to attempt and complicity. belex.sites.be.ch. ↩
4. Federal sanctions. Jagdgesetz (JSG), SR 922.0, art. 18 "Übertretungen" para. 1: "Mit Busse bis zu 20 000 Franken wird bestraft, wer vorsätzlich und ohne Berechtigung: ... e. Massnahmen zum Schutze der Tiere vor Störung missachtet"; para. 2 makes attempt and complicity punishable; para. 3 provides that negligent conduct in the cases of para. 1 let. a to g is punishable by fine. Ordnungsbussenverordnung (OBV), SR 314.11, annex 2, section XII, item 12005: "Freies Zelten oder Campieren in eidgenössischen Jagdbanngebieten (Art. 18 Abs. 1 Bst. e und Abs. 3 JSG, Art. 5 Abs. 1 Bst. e VEJ)", 150 francs. The neighbouring item 12003 tariffs entering or driving in wildlife rest zones off the designated routes and paths, also at 150 francs, and is a different offence from camping. Both items are confined by their own wording to federal game reserves and to off-route entry respectively, so neither tariffs camping in a cantonal rest zone. fedlex.admin.ch. ↩
5. Boundary geometry, terrain and surroundings, measured 4 September 2026 from the published perimeters and the federal elevation service. The rest zone perimeter for zone 2 carries 1'527 vertices, the nearest 1.1 m from the summit point; the summit tests inside it. The federal game reserve "Kiental", object 3, area 8'392.1 ha, typ "Gebiet mit partiellen Schutzbestimmungen", carries 2'161 vertices with its nearest edge 0.9 m from the summit point, which tests outside it. Ray casting on 24 bearings at 1 m resolution leaves the rest zone within 1 to 5 m on every bearing except the southwest arc from 195 to 240 degrees, where the zone continues for 2'730 to 2'980 m. Classifying a 2 km box at 25 m spacing against all three rest zone polygons and the game reserve gives 6'561 samples: 60.8% game reserve, 32.1% rest zone 2, 7.0% rest zone 1, and 0.0% outside both; the nearest point outside every regime lies 2'300 m west at LV95 2'618'158 / 1'155'320. Terrain on the 2 m model over an 800 by 800 m box: 11.7 degrees at the summit at 2'411.8 m, median slope 23.8 degrees, elevations 2'125.3 to 2'411.8 m, and 45 of 961 samples under 10 degrees. The flattest candidates and their regime: 0.6 degrees at 2'323.5 m, 334 m at bearing 283, rest zone; 1.3 degrees at 2'331.7 m, 361 m at bearing 56, game reserve; 1.9 degrees at 2'332.9 m, 261 m at bearing 73, game reserve. Nearest marked hiking path 1'979 m, nearest building in the federal register 3'178 m at Mitholz station, Kandersteg 5'236 m; names within 200 m are Giesegrat, Ärmigchnubel, Kiental and Kandertal. Every identify query ran alongside a deliberately invalid layer id returning HTTP 400 while real layers return HTTP 200, with a positive control inside federal game reserve no. 3 returning that polygon. map.geo.admin.ch. ↩
6. Communal law of Kandergrund, checked 4 September 2026. The commune's published register of regulations and ordinances lists no Polizeireglement; the acts published are the waste, wastewater, burial and cemetery, data protection, childcare, fire service, fees, communal property use, organisation, personnel and social welfare regulations. The building regulation, "Baureglement 2021 mit Ergänzungen 2023 und 2026", 76'338 characters with control counts of 152 for "Art.", 92 for "Bauten", 69 for "Zone" and 26 for "Gemeinderat", contains no provision on camping, tents, bivouac, caravans or overnight stays. Its apparent matches are a storage and processing zone ("Lager- und Aufbereitungszone LA") and a single mention of campsites as an example of buildings exposed to particular risks under art. 6 para. 3 of the cantonal building act. Its art. 34 "Wildtierschutz" para. 1 provides that for hunting within the wildlife protection area the provisions of the WTSchV of 26 February 2003, art. 3 para. 1 let. c and annex 2, apply, i.e. the commune refers back to the cantonal instrument and only for hunting. kandergrund.ch. ↩
7. Public petition "Gegen unverhältnismässige Einschränkungen durch Wildschutzgebiete im Kandertal und im Kanton Bern", addressed to the canton of Bern in connection with the revision of its wildlife protection rules, collection period 8 June 2021 to 26 August 2021, 3'147 signatures. It lists "Gehrihorn (11)" among the affected areas of the Kandertal, states "Mit dem eidgenössischen Wildtierschutzgebiet Kiental hat das Kandertal jetzt schon viele Einschränkungen zu tragen", and argues: "Ebenfalls ist Camping bzw. Biwakiern absolut verboten. Wir sind der Ansicht, dass mehrtägiges Campieren nicht erlaubt sein muss, aber wir sehen nicht ein, wieso eine Nacht Biwakieren/Campieren verboten sein soll." Cited here as a public petition and not as a legal source; the ordinance in force as checked on 4 September 2026 retains the camping and bivouac prohibition. openpetition.eu. ↩