Wild camping on the Böschenstöckli: lawful, and the commune puts a price on it

The commune taxes wild camping, which settles whether it bans it

Wild camping on the Böschenstöckli gets a clearer yes than most spots in this series, and the reason is a document nobody thinks to open: the visitor-tax ordinance.

Wassen levies a Kurtaxe on every guest who spends the night in the commune, across the whole territory and all year round. Article 4 sets the rate, and the list of places it applies to is the interesting part:

"CHF 1.00 in Hotels und Gasthäusern, in Ferienhäusern, Ferienwohnungen, Privatzimmern und auf ständigen, temporären oder wilden Campingplätzen"Kurtaxenverordnung der Gemeinde Wassen, art. 4 para. 2 lit. a. One franc per person per night, in hotels and guesthouses, holiday homes, holiday flats, private rooms and on permanent, temporary or wild campsites.

Read that again: "wilden Campingplätzen". The commune's own law contemplates wild campsites on its territory, puts them in the same list as hotels, and attaches a price to a night on one. You do not write a tariff for something you have prohibited. This is the closest thing to an official acknowledgement that wild camping happens in Wassen and is not an offence.⁵

What it does not mean. It is not a permit, and it is not an invitation to pitch anywhere. The obligation to actually collect the franc falls on the "Logisgeberin oder Logisgeber", the person providing the lodging, who has to invoice it and hold it as money in trust. On a mountainside there is no Logisgeber, so in practice nobody is billing you for a night on the Böschenstöckli. The value of the article is evidential rather than procedural: it tells you what the commune thinks of wild camping, which is not much at all.⁵

Three levels, all read, and the Uri trap that does not bite here

An absence is only worth something if you can say what was actually read. Here is each level, named, with the checks that make the zeros real.

Federal. Queried at the summit LV95 2'678'847 / 1'178'345 and at four points 200 metres out, then across a ring of points at one, two, three and four kilometres: no hunting-ban district, no wildlife rest zone, no BLN landscape, no UNESCO site, no mire or moor landscape, no floodplain, no dry meadow, no park of national importance. That is 64 clean queries in the ring alone. An invalid layer id surfaced as an HTTP error in every run and a control point in the Kiental returned its own hunting-ban district, so the empty result is an empty result rather than a broken query.¹

Cantonal. Uri has no camping norm addressed to the public. The nature and heritage act, the cantonal police act, the police reglement and the planning and building act were pulled in full from the cantonal law book and searched, with control words counted per act. None contains a camping, tent or bivouac provision. The building act mentions "Campinganlagen" once, as a use permitted in a particular zone, which is law about installations rather than about a night in a tent.²

And now the trap, because Uri has one and it caught this series before. The cantonal fixed-penalty reglement does tariff camping:

"Lagern, Zelten oder Campieren in Schutzzonen (Art. 34 Abs. 1 Bst. a des Gesetzes über den Natur- und Heimatschutz, RB 10.5101 in Verbindung mit dem jeweiligen Reglement) · 150 Franken"Reglement über die Erhebung von Ordnungsbussen, RB 3.9223, Ziff. 2.1.

The decisive words are "in Verbindung mit dem jeweiligen Reglement". The penalty is parasitic: it bites only where a protection reglement actually prohibits the conduct. So the question is not whether Uri has a CHF 150 tariff, it is whether any reglement puts a protection zone with a camping ban on the Böschenstöckli. I enumerated the entire cantonal protection series to answer that. The Uri camping formula, "zu lagern, zu zelten und zu campieren sowie Standplätze zu diesen Zwecken zu überlassen", appears in three reglements: the south shore of the Urnersee, the Maderanertal and Fellital in Silenen, and the moors on the Urnerboden in Spiringen. None of them covers Wassen, and there is no Wassen protection reglement at all.³

Communal. Wassen publishes fifteen documents in its Rechtssammlung and every one of them was read for this article. Eight are scans with no usable text layer and were put through optical character recognition, because a scan a text extractor cannot read looks exactly like a law that says nothing. Every file ends with a real control count behind it and none was left unread. There is no Campingverordnung and no Polizeiverordnung. The Bau- und Zonenordnung of 7 June 2019, which is where the entire camping ban hides in Klosters and in Bivio, runs 30'716 characters with 195 control words and zero camping terms. The only two documents in the whole collection that mention camping at all are the two versions of the visitor-tax ordinance, and they are the ones quoted above.⁴⁵

Where to pitch, and why the summit itself is not it

The law is the easy half here. The ground is the half worth planning, because this summit is steeper than the contour lines suggest at a glance.

Sampling a 25 metre grid over the 400 by 400 metre box around the top and computing slope from the local gradient, the median slope is 44.8 degrees and only 3 of 225 nodes come in under 10 degrees. The box spans 2'028 to 2'310 metres, so you are on a steep shoulder rather than a plateau. Pitching on the high point itself is not realistic.⁷

The flat ground is just below and to the west-south-west.

• LV95 2'678'722 / 1'178'270, 2'153.8 m, about 146 m from the summit and 104 m below it. Slope 2.8 degrees, comfortably the best ground in the box.⁷
• If you want to stay high, LV95 2'678'897 / 1'178'220 at 2'258.7 m, about 135 m out to the south-south-east, measures 8.1 degrees. Level enough for a small tent, and exposed.⁷
• Closest of all, 79 m out at 2'197.6 m, is 10.5 degrees. Usable for a bivvy bag, marginal for a tent.⁷

Nobody to ask, and one number that says why. The building register counts three buildings within 300 metres of every one of those candidates, which is an alp rather than a settlement. Korporation Uri, which holds a great deal of the land in this canton, states the position plainly: "Im Kanton Uri besteht kein generelles Verbot für Wildcamping. Auf Gebiet der Korporation Uri ist das Campieren somit grundsätzlich erlaubt und muss nicht angemeldet werden." No registration, no fee, no permission needed. It asks for notification only above three nights or more than ten people, and it asks you to speak to the alp farmer if you are camping near a working operation, which on ground with an alp 300 metres away is worth doing.⁶⁷⁸

The comparison worth carrying up the valley. Eight kilometres south, Göschenen prohibits wild camping outright through its own Campingverordnung, and Korporation Uri names it as one of only two exceptions to its general permission. Same canton, same road, same river, opposite answer. If you are moving between the two, the boundary matters more than anything in this article.⁶

Where you can legally sleep

• The shelf 146 m west-south-west of the summit, LV95 2'678'722 / 1'178'270, 2'153.8 m. At 2.8 degrees it is the flattest ground anywhere near the top⁷.
• The 8.1 degree spot at 2'258.7 m, 135 m south-south-east, if you want to stay at summit height and accept the exposure⁷.
• Anywhere sensible on Korporation Uri ground, which needs no registration for one night and a small group⁶.
• Not on the high point itself. Median slope in the summit box is 44.8 degrees and only three nodes in 225 fall under ten⁷.
• Not in Göschenen, eight kilometres up the valley. That commune banned it, and Korporation Uri lists it as an exception⁶.

General rules for wild camping

This matters more where the answer is yes than where it is no. The list below is not law, it is what the yes actually rests on, and the reason it would change if Wassen ever wrote the ordinance its neighbour wrote.

• 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 absence of any prohibition at the federal, cantonal and communal level, and an absence can end: Göschenen eight kilometres away shows exactly what that looks like. Eight of the fifteen Wassen documents were read by optical character recognition from scans, so if a wording matters to your plans, ask the commune for the current text on 041 885 11 35. Before every tour, check the current sources yourself 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.

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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.

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