As of: 27 August 2026

Wild camping at the Alpe di Manió: Ticino wrote the exception into the statute

Most Swiss camping answers are built out of absences: no cantonal rule, no communal rule, therefore probably fine. Ticino is different. It has a camping act that bans camping outside authorised sites and then, in the very next paragraph, permits pitching a tent for a mountain bivouac. That is the strongest legal basis this journal ever gets to publish.

Leon Helg
Leon Helg · Legal situation checked in August 2026 · Published 27 August 2026
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.

What "wild camping" means here: one night. A small tent or a bivvy bag, up towards evening, gone in the morning. Not a base camp, not a camper van. Most Swiss bans are written against camping; whether a single night also falls under them depends on the exact wording, so this article checks that wording. The full difference: wild camping vs bivouacking.

The ban and the exception are in the same article

Ticino legislated camping as its own subject in 2004, which almost no other canton did, and the whole answer for the Val Bedretto sits in two paragraphs of that act.

"È possibile campeggiare unicamente nelle aree autorizzate destinate a campeggio. Fa eccezione al principio di cui al cpv. 1 l'attendamento a scopo di bivacco in montagna."Legge sui campeggi del 26 gennaio 2004, RL 631, art. 2 paras. 1 and 2, consolidated version in force 1 January 2024.

Read the second sentence slowly, because the wording is doing real work. Attendamento is the pitching of a tent. The exception is therefore not limited to sleeping in the open under a bivvy bag: a tent is expressly inside it, provided the purpose is a bivacco in montagna and not a campeggio. The dividing line the canton drew is purpose and duration, not equipment.3

What the act means by camping. Art. 3 defines campeggiare as the temporary stopping and overnighting away from one's own home using mobile installations, in particular tents, caravans and motorhomes. Art. 27 sets the sanction: fines from CHF 50 to CHF 10'000, imposed by the Municipio under the communal organisation act. That is a real penalty, and it is why the exception matters so much: without it a single night in the mountains would be exposed to it.3

Nothing communal displaces it. The Comune di Bedretto publishes eight documents in total: the patriziale regulation, an ordinance on dogs, and six pieces of the piano regolatore. The norms of the plan run to 129'826 characters and contain no camping provision at all, the only apparent hits being the Italian verb tendano in the conservation articles. There is no communal police ordinance and no camping ordinance to override the cantonal exception.4

Federal, briefly, because there is nothing to say. Every inventory is empty at the point: no game reserve, no wildlife rest zone, no BLN object, no mire, no floodplain, no dry meadow, no amphibian site, no park of national importance. The nearest BLN object is 3'600 metres to the south-east, in the Val Bavona, and there is no game reserve or wildlife rest zone within 6 kilometres. Verified with an invalid-layer control that errors with HTTP 400 rather than returning an empty set.1

Whose alp is this, and why the question is worth asking here

In Ticino the second question after the statute is always the patriziato. These are the old corporate landowners, and they write their own regulations for their own ground. The Patriziato di Bedretto's regulation, published in December 2021, has a chapter on the occupation of land and it is not shy:

"Ogni occupazione momentanea di terreno patriziale deve essere autorizzata dall'Ufficio patriziale. Ogni manomissione e occupazione abusiva del terreno patriziale sarà punita."Regolamento Patriziale di Bedretto, art. 31 "Occupazione di terreno".

Art. 32 then handles tents directly. Written permission may be granted to organised groups, and only in two named zones, Signoi and Chiavöt. Anyone who puts up a tent, camper or caravan without that authorisation can be made to take it down and pays a fine under art. 106, which caps at CHF 10'000. And there is an occupation fee, set by the Ufficio patriziale, per person per day.5

Then comes the finding that decides it: Manió is not one of the Patriziato di Bedretto's alps. Art. 9 of the same regulation names them, and the list is closed: Valleggia with Folcra, Folcra di mezzo and Valpiana; Cioss Prato with Cassina Baggio, Cruina and Corno; Cavanna with C'assin di stèrli, Viéi and Al Mött; Pesciora with C'asina nova and i Pièi. Manió appears nowhere. Art. 20, drawing the boundary of the patriziale forests, even runs it "fino ai confini con l'alpe di Manegorio", which is the other name for this alp, treating it as somebody else's ground.5

Whose, then? The land register does not publish ownership parcel by parcel, so this article does not assert it as fact. What the valley says, consistently, is that the Alpe Maniò, also called Manegorio, belongs to the Patriziato di Sobrio, a patriziato from the Leventina about forty kilometres down the road, and that it is loaded by someone from Bedretto. Treat that as local knowledge rather than a land-register entry, and if you want to be certain about a particular corner, ask. Patriziato di Sobrio, 6749 Sobrio, 091 873 52 25, conta@faido.ch. Comune di Bedretto, CH-6781 Bedretto, 091 869 17 17.6

Why any of this matters when the canton has already said yes. Because a cantonal statutory exception governs public law, and a landowner's regulation governs their own ground alongside it. On the four Bedretto alps named in art. 9 you would be inside a live permission regime with a fee and a fine attached. Here you are not, on the best reading available, and the courteous move is unchanged: if there is stock and someone is working the alp, say hello.

The map pin is a slope, and the pitch is 285 metres away

The gazetteer entry is an area label, not a place to lie down. "Alpe di Manió" is a Gebiet in the national gazetteer and its anchor sits at LV95 2'677'781 / 1'148'390, WGS84 46.48232 / 8.45157, 1'991.3 m. Measured over a 25 metre window that point runs at 29.2 degrees. Anybody who navigates to the pin and looks for a flat spot will be disappointed, and this article is not going to pretend otherwise.2

The alp ground is above and to the south-south-west. Sampling the terrain on a 25 metre grid out to 500 metres gives 46 nodes at or under 8 degrees, and they form one coherent bench rather than scattered artefacts:2

  • LV95 2'677'606 / 1'148'165, 2'075.7 m, 1.6 degrees, 285 m south-south-west. The flattest reading in range.
  • LV95 2'677'656 / 1'148'190, 2'073.4 m, 2.3 degrees, 236 m.
  • LV95 2'677'706 / 1'148'240, 2'070.7 m, 4.4 degrees, 168 m, the closest usable ground to the pin.
  • Further west the bench continues at 2'080 to 2'088 m with readings of 1.3 to 1.4 degrees out to 500 m.

The water check, because a height model lies about lakes. A digital terrain model renders standing water as a plane, so an unmasked slope scan near tarns will happily report the middle of the water as the flattest ground. There are four small water bodies mapped in this basin, and they are 346 metres and further from every cell recommended above, with the candidate elevations spread across 2'070 to 2'088 m rather than sharing a single value. No lake plane is involved in these numbers.2

Where the buildings are. The federal building register returns nothing within 300 metres of the pin. Three buildings are mapped 539 to 564 metres to the south-east of the recommended bench, which is the alp's own working corner. The Capanna Piansecco of the Swiss Alpine Club is 2.0 km east-north-east at 1'981.9 m and All'Acqua, with its restaurant and the postbus on the Nufenen road, is 1.8 km north-east at 1'613 m. So the bench is genuinely open ground, not a farmyard.2

Orientation for the whole Manió system, because the name repeats up the mountain and requests get confused: Manió itself at 1'742.3 m, the Alpe di Manió at 1'991.3 m, Manió di Sopra at 2'116.2 m, the Alpe San Giacomo di Manió at about 2'254 m and the Passo di Manió at 2'712.9 m. This article answers for the alp, the middle of that ladder.2

How to do it without annoying anybody

Come up late and go down early. The upper Val Bedretto is a working valley with alp traffic in the morning, and the whole point of a bivacco under the Ticino exception is that it is over before the day starts. That is not sentiment: it is the distinction the statute itself draws between a bivouac and a campeggio.3

Stay off the alp's working corner. The bench 285 metres south-south-west of the pin puts half a kilometre between you and the buildings, which is the right distance for everyone.2

Water. There are small tarns in the basin several hundred metres west of the recommended ground, and the alp has its own supply which is not yours. Carry what you need up from All'Acqua or the Capanna Piansecco and keep the fifty metre distance from any water for the obvious business.2

Fire, which is the one thing that changes fast here. The Ticino side of the Alps carries fire bans several summers out of ten, and they are cantonal decisions published at short notice. A gas stove is enough in any case, and it stays legal when an open fire does not.4

Courtesy, which is not law. The Alpine Club's leaflet is the standard: a single considerate night by a small group above the treeline is generally unproblematic, an emergency bivouac is always permitted, and you should not sleep close to huts or on grazed alps without asking. On an alp whose ownership sits two valleys away, asking is also simply the fastest way to be certain.7

  • The bench 285 m south-south-west of the pin, LV95 2'677'606 / 1'148'165, 2'076 m, 1.6 degrees2.
  • The closer shoulder 168 m south-south-west, LV95 2'677'706 / 1'148'240, 2'071 m, 4.4 degrees2.
  • Anywhere on the same bench out to 500 m west, 2'080 to 2'088 m, 1.3 to 1.4 degrees2.
  • Not on the gazetteer pin itself. It is a label anchor on a 29 degree flank2.
  • Not on the four alps the Patriziato di Bedretto names as its own, Valleggia, Cioss Prato, Cavanna and Pesciora, without asking the Ufficio patriziale first5.

General rules for wild camping

Ticino gave you a statutory exception rather than a grey zone, and that is worth protecting. The list below is not law. It is the reason a canton that could have written a blanket ban chose to write an exception instead.

  • 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

This article reflects my research and assessment to the best of my knowledge, as of August 2026. It is based on the publicly accessible and official sources linked below. It does not replace legal advice and is not a binding statement of the current legal situation.

The verdict rests on the express exception in art. 2 para. 2 of the Ticino camping act, on the absence of any communal camping provision in Bedretto, and on the Patriziato di Bedretto's own list of its alps, which does not include Manió. Ownership of alpine ground is not published parcel by parcel, so the identification of the owner in this article is local knowledge and not a land-register statement; a landowner may set conditions on their own ground whatever the statute says. Before every tour, check the current sources yourself, watch for cantonal fire bans, and follow instructions on site. A genuine emergency bivouac in distress is a separate question from a planned camp. Anyone who spends the night outside bears responsibility for their own conduct and any consequences themselves. Hikebeast, Leon Helg and Saftladen GmbH accept no liability for decisions made on the basis of this text, and call on no one to break applicable law.

Frequently asked questions

Is wild camping allowed at the Alpe di Manió?
Yes, as a mountain bivouac, and the statute says so directly. Art. 2 para. 1 of the Ticino Legge sui campeggi of 26 January 2004 permits camping only on authorised camping areas, and art. 2 para. 2 excepts pitching a tent for the purpose of a mountain bivouac from that principle. The commune of Bedretto has no camping provision in any of its eight published documents, and every federal inventory is empty at the point. What you should do is sleep on the bench 285 metres south-south-west of the map pin rather than on the pin itself, which is a 29 degree flank.
Does the exception cover a tent, or only a bivvy bag?
A tent. The Italian word the statute uses is attendamento, which means pitching a tent, so the exception is written around tents rather than around sleeping in the open. The line the canton drew is purpose and duration: a bivacco in montagna is excepted, a campeggio is not. Art. 3 of the same act defines camping as temporary stopping and overnighting away from home using mobile installations such as tents, caravans and motorhomes, and art. 27 backs it with fines of CHF 50 to 10'000 imposed by the Municipio.
Who owns the alp, and do I need permission?
Not the Patriziato di Bedretto, which is the point. Its 2021 regulation makes any temporary occupation of patriziale ground subject to authorisation, confines permitted tent camps to the zones Signoi and Chiavöt, fines unauthorised tents up to CHF 10'000 and charges an occupation fee per person per day. But its art. 9 lists its own alps as Valleggia, Cioss Prato, Cavanna and Pesciora, and Manió is not among them. Local knowledge puts this alp with the Patriziato di Sobrio in the Leventina, 091 873 52 25. Ownership is not published parcel by parcel, so if a particular corner matters to you, ask.
Where exactly should I pitch?
On the bench above and south-south-west of the pin, at 2'050 to 2'090 metres. On a 25 metre grid out to 500 m, 46 nodes measure 8 degrees or less. The flattest is LV95 2'677'606 / 1'148'165 at 2'076 m and 1.6 degrees, 285 m from the pin; the closest usable ground is LV95 2'677'706 / 1'148'240 at 2'071 m and 4.4 degrees, 168 m out. The mapped tarns in the basin are 346 metres and further from all of these, so none of the flat readings is a height model flattening water.
What about fire?
Take a gas stove and check the fire ban before you leave. The Ticino side of the Alps runs summer fire bans in many years, decided at cantonal level and published at short notice, and they can reach as far as banning stoves in the worst conditions. An open fire has no place up here in any case: the alp needs its wood, and the ground recovers slowly at 2'000 metres.
Leon Helg

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. Official federal geodata, queried 27 August 2026 at LV95 2'677'781 / 1'148'390. Hunting-ban districts, wildlife rest zones, BLN, parks of national importance, floodplains, raised and lowland mires, moor landscapes, amphibian spawning sites and dry meadows and pastures all return a genuinely empty result set. Verified with an invalid-layer control (ch.bafu.this-layer-does-not-exist) that surfaced as HTTP 400 in every run, and a positive control at 2'626'000 / 1'154'500 that returned the Kiental hunting-ban district as expected. Nearest BLN object 3'600 m south-east, "Val Bavona"; no hunting-ban district and no wildlife rest zone within 6 km on a twelve-bearing sweep. map.geo.admin.ch. ↩
  2. swisstopo swissBOUNDARIES3D commune geometry, filtered to the current year, the national gazetteer, the federal building and dwelling register and the swissALTI3D height model, queried 27 August 2026. Pin: gazetteer entry "Gebiet Alpe di Manió (TI)", LV95 2'677'781 / 1'148'390, WGS84 46.48232 / 8.45157, 1'991.3 m, commune of Bedretto; nearest other commune Obergoms (VS) 2'233 m north-west, and the Italian border 2'431 m south. Slope at the pin 29.2 degrees over a 25 m window. Terrain sampled on a 25 m grid to ±500 m, 1'521 nodes, slope from the local gradient: 46 nodes at or under 8 degrees, best 1.6 degrees at 2'677'606 / 1'148'165, 2'075.7 m, 285 m south-south-west; 2.3 degrees at 2'677'656 / 1'148'190, 2'073.4 m; 4.4 degrees at 2'677'706 / 1'148'240, 2'070.7 m, 168 m; 1.3 to 1.4 degrees on the same bench out to 500 m at 2'080 to 2'088 m. Water check against the four OpenStreetMap water polygons in the basin: all are 346 m or further from every recommended cell and the candidate elevations differ, so no lake-plane artefact is in play. Buildings: the federal register returns none within 300 m of the pin; three mapped buildings lie 539 to 564 m south-east of the bench. Reference heights: Manió 1'742.3 m, Manió di Sopra 2'116.2 m, Passo di Manió 2'712.9 m, Capanna Piansecco CAS 1'981.9 m at 2.0 km east-north-east, All'Acqua 1'613.2 m at 1.8 km north-east. map.geo.admin.ch. ↩
  3. Legge sui campeggi del 26 gennaio 2004, Repubblica e Cantone Ticino, RL 631 (previously 11.3.2.2), consolidated version in force 1 January 2024, consulted 27 August 2026. Art. 1: "La presente legge disciplina l'utilizzazione delle aree destinate a campeggio." Art. 2 "Principio", para. 1: "È possibile campeggiare unicamente nelle aree autorizzate destinate a campeggio."; para. 2: "Fa eccezione al principio di cui al cpv. 1 l'attendamento a scopo di bivacco in montagna." Art. 3 "Campeggiare; definizione": "Sono considerati «campeggiare» la sosta e il pernottamento temporaneo al di fuori del proprio domicilio, utilizzando in particolare installazioni mobili quali tende, «roulottes», «motorhomes»." Art. 6 confines camping sites to zones reserved for the purpose by a communal or cantonal plan. Art. 27 "Multa": "Le infrazioni alla presente legge ed al suo regolamento sono punite dal Municipio con una multa da un minimo di fr. 50.-- ad un massimo di fr. 10'000.-- giusta le norme della legge organica comunale." m3.ti.ch. ↩
  4. Comune di Bedretto, "Regolamenti e ordinanze", consulted 27 August 2026. The published collection is eight documents: Regolamento Patriziale 2021, Ordinanza sui cani, and six parts of the piano regolatore (PR Bedretto, PR NAPR, PR Ossasco, PR Piano d'insieme, PR Ronco, PR Villa e Orello). All were downloaded and searched. The norme di attuazione del piano regolatore run to 129'826 characters against 11 occurrences of "vietat" and 38 of "comune" as controls, and contain no camping provision: the two apparent "tenda" matches are the verb tendano in the articles on conserving building substance. There is no communal police ordinance and no camping ordinance, so nothing communal displaces the cantonal exception. Comune di Bedretto, CH-6781 Bedretto, 091 869 17 17; Municipio 2026: sindaco Ignazio Leonardi, vicesindaco Mattia Forni, municipale Elio Triulzi, segretario Luca Fraschina. bedretto.ch. ↩
  5. Regolamento Patriziale di Bedretto, published 27 December 2021, consulted 27 August 2026. Art. 31 "Occupazione di terreno": "Ogni occupazione momentanea di terreno patriziale deve essere autorizzata dall'Ufficio patriziale. Ogni manomissione e occupazione abusiva del terreno patriziale sarà punita." Art. 32 "Campeggi e Foyer Bedretto", para. 1: "La posa di tende per campeggi, previa domanda scritta, può essere concessa a gruppi organizzati quali esploratori, ecc., nella zona di "Signoi", e "Chiavöt" […]"; para. 3: "Chi posa tende, camper o roulottes abusivamente può essere costretto a rimuoverle e pagherà una multa come previsto dall'art. 106."; para. 4: "È riscossa una tassa di occupazione fissata dall'Ufficio patriziale, per persona al giorno." Art. 106 para. 2 caps the fine at fr. 10'000. Decisively for this article, art. 9 "Denominazione" lists the Patriziato's own alps and the list is closed: "Gli alpi del Patriziato, tutti in territorio del Comune di Bedretto, sono: Valleggia (con Folcra, Folcra di mezzo e Valpiana); Cioss Prato (con Cassina Baggio, Cruina e Corno); Cavanna (con C'assin di stèrli, Viéi e Al Mött); Pesciora (con C'asina nova e i Pièi)." Manió is not among them, and art. 20 draws the boundary of the patriziale forests "fino ai confini con l'alpe di Manegorio". bedretto.ch. ↩
  6. Ownership, stated as local knowledge rather than as a land-register fact. The Swiss land register does not publish ownership parcel by parcel, so this article does not assert who owns the ground. Hiking and valley sources consistently describe the Alpe Maniò, also called Manegorio, running from 1'743 m up to the corte San Giacomo at about 2'254 m, as belonging to the Patriziato di Sobrio in the Leventina, loaded by someone from Bedretto; the individual named in a 2012 source held the office of sindaco of Bedretto, which has since changed hands, so only the institution is published here. Patriziato di Sobrio, 6749 Sobrio, 091 873 52 25, conta@faido.ch, president Flavio Giandeini, secretary Mauro Domenighini, as listed by the Comune di Faido. faido.ch. ↩
  7. Swiss Alpine Club SAC, Merkblatt "Campieren und Biwakieren in den Schweizer Bergen". Quoted: "Ansonsten ist eine einzelne Übernachtung einer kleinen Anzahl Personen im Gebirge oberhalb der Waldgrenze in der Regel unproblematisch, wenn sie rücksichtsvoll erfolgt. Zudem ist ein Notbiwak grundsätzlich erlaubt." And: "Übernachte nicht zu nahe bei Hütten und beweideten Alpen oder erkundige dich, ob eine Übernachtung in der Nähe möglich ist." Guidance and courtesy, not law. Read alongside ZGB SR 210 art. 699, a right of access to forest and pasture within customary limits and never a right to spend the night: what makes this spot lawful is the express exception in the Ticino camping act. sac-cas.ch. ↩