Wild camping at the Col des Avouillons: the flat saddle on the Corbassière crossing is on Val de Bagnes ground, where camping is banned commune-wide
The saddle between the Cabane Brunet and the Cabane FXB Panossière carries the flattest ground for several hundred metres, which is exactly why people think about sleeping there. It is in the commune of Val de Bagnes, and Val de Bagnes forbids camping across its whole territory outside places it has designated itself.
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.
The Val de Bagnes rule, and the four words that reach a bivouac
Wild camping at the Col des Avouillons is not a grey zone. The saddle sits at 2'648.1 metres in the commune of Val de Bagnes, district d'Entremont, and the question is decided by that commune, not by the canton and not by the hut.1
Val de Bagnes was formed from the merger of Bagnes and Vollèges, and since January 2025 it has one police regulation covering the whole of it. The Conseil municipal approved it on 9 April 2024, the Conseil général adopted it on 19 June 2024, it was modified on 10 December 2024, and the Conseil d'Etat homologated it in January 2025, from which point it is in force. It abrogates the old Bagnes regulation of 25 November 2003 and the Vollèges one of 29 November 2002, so there is no older communal text still running in parallel. The Conseil d'Etat struck article 70 out of it on homologation but did not renumber, so the articles below carry the numbers the published text carries.2
"Le camping, le caravaning et ce qui leur est assimilable sont interdits en dehors des emplacements autorisés expressément désignés comme tels par l'Autorité."Règlement de police de la Commune de Val de Bagnes, art. 55 al. 2. Camping, caravaning and what is comparable to them are forbidden outside the authorised places expressly designated as such by the Authority.
Two things in that sentence decide the col. The first is the geography of the ban: it is not tied to a lake, a reserve or a road, it is tied to the absence of a designation, and article 4 al. 1 says the regulation applies "sur l'ensemble du territoire de la Commune de Val de Bagnes", across the whole commune. There is exactly one designated place in it, the Camping Forêt des Mélèzes at Bonatchiesse. Everywhere else, including a saddle at 2'648 metres, is outside a designated place by definition. The second is the phrase "et ce qui leur est assimilable", and what it is doing there.312
The regulation never says "tent" and never says "bivouac". Neither word appears once in the entire document. That absence is the thing people read as a loophole, and it is the opposite: the drafters did not list the forms, they wrote camping and caravaning and then extended the offence to what is comparable to them. That extension clause is Valais boilerplate. Salvan carries it at art. 57, the shared Vouvry, St-Gingolph, Port-Valais and Vionnaz regulation at art. 56 al. 2, Evolène at art. 54 al. 2 and Anniviers at art. 58 al. 1, word for word. The only commune on record that has stated a reading of that wording, Vouvry, reads it as including the bivouac. No Valais court and no commentary has construed it, and a search of the Swiss case-law index returns nothing on the phrase, so this is honestly an untested edge. What it is not is an exemption. Where a commune does want to exempt the tentless bivouac it says so: the Vals regulation in Graubünden carves the Biwak out by name, which is why the ground there comes out as a conditional rather than a ban. Val de Bagnes wrote the opposite kind of clause.3
The fine is a statutory range, and negligence is enough. Article 77 al. 1 provides that the fine "ne peut être inférieur à 10 francs, ni supérieur à 10'000 francs", not below CHF 10 and not above CHF 10'000, with a cap of CHF 1'000 for minors. That is the range the commune may work in, not a price list: there is no published camping tariff for Val de Bagnes, so anyone quoting you a typical figure is inventing it. Article 75 al. 3 adds that contraventions are punishable "même si elles procèdent d'une simple négligence", so not knowing the rule is not a defence.5
The canton is not the level that decides this. Valais has no cantonal wild-camping ban that binds the public. The cantonal structure plan hands the question down explicitly: coordination sheet B.3 "Camping" states at letter k) that the communes "fixent les prescriptions relatives au camping sauvage dans leur règlement de police ou autre règlement communal", they set the wild-camping rules in their police regulation or another communal regulation. Val de Bagnes did exactly that, which is why the communal text is the whole answer here.6
Why consent does not help here
The usual Swiss workaround is to ask whoever owns the ground. At the Col des Avouillons that does not work, and the reason is in the same regulation. Article 2 al. 2 defines who "l'Autorité" is: "L'autorité communale (ci-après : « l'Autorité ») est le conseil municipal." Only the conseil municipal can designate an authorised emplacement under article 55 al. 2, and article 2 al. 3 lets it delegate that only to its own members or its own services. A hut warden, a tourist office, an alp tenant or a guide is not the Authority and cannot become it.4
Private ownership does not put you outside the rule either. Article 4 al. 2 states that "L'Autorité peut intervenir sur le domaine privé dans le cadre de ses compétences", the Authority may act on private land within its competences. So the ban does not stop at a fence: a yes from a landowner, an alp tenant or a consortage does not create a designated emplacement and does not cure the offence. In practice there is one lawful pitch in the entire commune, and it is 1'000 metres lower, on the valley floor.4
The lawful ways to sleep on this crossing. First, the Cabane FXB Panossière at 2'645 metres, 1'785 metres east-south-east of the col and directly on the route, 75 places, dormitories with duvets, wardens Henri and Sylvie Chastellain, +41 27 771 33 22, info@panossiere.ch, panossiere.ch. The 2026 season runs 28 March to 30 May and 27 June to 26 September, and booking ahead is required. Second, the Cabane Brunet about 2.7 kilometres away at the other end of the traverse. Third, the Camping Forêt des Mélèzes at Bonatchiesse, Route de Mauvoisin 533, 1948 Fionnay, +41 27 778 12 40, bonatchiesse.ch, which is the "emplacement autorisé" that article 55 al. 2 is pointing at and the only lawful pitch in the commune. What does not exist is a lawful wild pitch anywhere on Val de Bagnes ground.1112
A genuine emergency bivouac is a separate question. If injury, a sudden storm or darkness catches you out, spending the night where you are to get through it safely is lawful in the Swiss mountains and is not what a camping ban is aimed at. That is an emergency, not a plan. Walking up in the evening with a tent because the col is flat and the light is good is a planned camp, and that is what article 55 al. 2 forbids.13
No fire. There is nothing to burn at 2'648 metres on bare rock and moraine, and an open fire has no business on this ground in any case. A gas stove is enough, and the col has no water, so you carry that too.
What the tourist office says, and why it is not a permission
There is a softer text about this valley online, and it is worth reading properly rather than quoting. Verbier and Val de Bagnes Tourisme publishes a "Respect Nature" page which states that camping is prohibited throughout the municipality except at Bonatchiesse, that bivouac is strictly forbidden inside the Haut Val de Bagnes protected area, and that outside that area a bivouac, described as sleeping under the stars without a tent, "may be considered" above the treeline, "in compliance with current regulations".7
Who publishes it matters more than what it says. That page comes from Verbier Tourisme SA, a public limited company and the destination marketing organisation for the valley. It is not the commune, it is not the conseil municipal, and it is not a communal publication.7
So it cannot do the thing people want it to do. Under article 2 al. 2 of the very regulation the page is interpreting, the Authority is the conseil municipal and nobody else. A marketing organisation cannot designate an authorised emplacement, and it cannot narrow an offence that a communal legislative act defines. Its own sentence gives the game away: "in compliance with current regulations" points straight back at article 55 al. 2, which forbids camping and what is comparable to it outside designated places. Read the page as what it is, an accurate description of how the destination talks about bivouac and a genuine warning about the protected area, and not as a permission you could rely on if a communal officer took a different view.43
What the maps say
The federal layers are quiet at this pin, and that is a real answer rather than a gap. Querying the point with zero tolerance returns no federal game reserve, no wildlife rest zone, no BLN object, no floodplain, no bog, no amphibian spawning site, no dry meadow and no park. The control query on an invalid layer name returns an HTTP error rather than an empty result, so the empty answers are genuine empties and not a silent failure.1
The nearest prohibition-carrying perimeter is much closer than that makes it sound. The proglacial alluvial zone of the Glacier de Corbassière, federal inventory object CH 1168, begins about 330 metres north-west of the col. The Glacier du Petit Combin alluvial zone, object CH 1167, is about 730 metres away. Further off, BLN object 1703 Haut Val de Bagnes is 2'229 metres away and the federal game reserve 36 Mauvoisin 2'014 metres. So the col itself is outside every one of them, and a wander north-west onto the glacier forefield is not.8
Those two alluvial objects are not only federal. The Bagnes zoning and building regulation re-enacts them communally at article 116 as a zone de protection de la nature, under which "Toute modification même mineure de l'état des lieux dans un autre but est interdite", any modification of the state of the site, even a minor one, is forbidden, and "Les constructions sont interdites". That is a second, ground-specific prohibition sitting a few hundred metres from the saddle, on the side people naturally drift towards for the glacier view.98
The terrain explains why the question comes up at all. The saddle carries a genuinely flat north-south ribbon about 120 metres long, measuring 2646.6, 2648.1, 2648.2 and 2648.9 metres from 40 metres north to 80 metres south of the pin, the flattest ground for several hundred metres in any direction. It is narrow the other way: 40 metres east drops to 2628.8 metres and then falls hard toward the Corbassière glacier, and 40 to 80 metres west rises onto the ridge. It is bare high-alpine ground, wind-exposed, with no shelter and no water at the col, and a marked path passes within 400 metres.10
Why the verdict is Illegal and not merely discouraged. There is a named communal norm, in force, that reaches this exact ground: article 55 al. 2, applied across the whole commune by article 4 al. 1, with a fine range in article 77 al. 1 and negligence caught by article 75 al. 3. There is no designated emplacement anywhere near the col and no consent route to create one. Nothing is known about enforcement in the Corbassière sector, no press report, no fine record, no patrol account, no sign inventory, and that is worth saying plainly, but it does not soften the verdict. The verdict states what the law says, not the odds of meeting someone who applies it.2
Where you can legally sleep
- Cabane FXB Panossière, 2'645 m, 1'785 m east-south-east of the col on the same crossing, 75 places, dormitories with duvets, wardens Henri and Sylvie Chastellain. +41 27 771 33 22, info@panossiere.ch, panossiere.ch. The 2026 season runs 28 March to 30 May and 27 June to 26 September, and you must book ahead.
- Cabane Brunet, about 2.7 km away at the other end of the traverse, the natural other half of a two-day crossing.
- Camping Forêt des Mélèzes, Bonatchiesse, Route de Mauvoisin 533, 1948 Fionnay, +41 27 778 12 40, bonatchiesse.ch. The only authorised pitch in the commune and the one place article 55 al. 2 designates.
- Not the col itself. The saddle is flat and tempting and it is outside every designated emplacement, which is exactly what article 55 al. 2 forbids, commune-wide under article 4 al. 1.
- Not anywhere else on Val de Bagnes ground either. The ban runs across the whole territory, and article 4 al. 2 lets the Authority act on private land, so moving onto an alp or a private parcel changes nothing.
- Not north-west onto the glacier forefield. The Corbassière alluvial zone begins about 330 m that way, and RCCZ Bagnes article 116 forbids even a minor modification of the state of the site inside it.
General rules for wild camping
This applies wherever you are genuinely allowed to sleep, which on this crossing means the Cabane FXB Panossière, the Cabane Brunet or the campsite at Bonatchiesse, never the saddle. It is not legal text, it is decency and common sense on bare high-alpine ground with a glacier forefield under federal and communal protection a few hundred metres away.
- 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.
Communal police regulations and their enforcement can change, protection perimeters are revised, and hut seasons, wardens and prices are updated every year, so material written about this area earlier may be out of date. Before every tour, check the current sources yourself, respect the protection zones and the commune's rules, 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 Col des Avouillons?
Does the ban catch a bivouac without a tent?
The tourist office says a bivouac may be tolerated, so is it allowed?
How big is the fine, and does anyone check?
Can a landowner, an alp or the hut give me permission?
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.
Sources
- Federal geodata at the pin, WGS84 46.006882 / 7.279944, LV95 E 2'587'706 / N 1'095'049, elevation 2'648.1 m (geo.admin.ch reframe and height services). The swissBOUNDARIES layer places the point in the commune of Val de Bagnes, district d'Entremont, canton Valais. Identify at the point with tolerance 0 returns no federal game reserve (ch.bafu.bundesinventare-jagdbanngebiete), no wildlife rest zone (ch.bafu.wrz-wildruhezonen_portal), no BLN object, no floodplain, no raised or transitional bog, no amphibian spawning site, no dry meadow and no park. A control query naming an invalid layer returns HTTP 400 rather than an empty feature list, so the empty answers above are genuine. map.geo.admin.ch. ↩
- Règlement de police de la Commune de Val de Bagnes, read from the commune's own PDF. Approved by the Conseil municipal on 9 April 2024, adopted by the Conseil général on 19 June 2024, modified on 10 December 2024, homologated by the Conseil d'Etat in January 2025 and in force from homologation; the Conseil d'Etat suppressed art. 70 without renumbering, so the article numbers cited here are those of the published text. It abrogates the Bagnes regulation of 25 November 2003 and the Vollèges regulation of 29 November 2002, so it governs the whole merged commune. Art. 4 al. 1: "Les dispositions du présent règlement sont applicables sur l'ensemble du territoire de la Commune de Val de Bagnes." Art. 55 al. 2: "Le camping, le caravaning et ce qui leur est assimilable sont interdits en dehors des emplacements autorisés expressément désignés comme tels par l'Autorité." The words "bivouac" and "tente" appear nowhere in the document. valdebagnes.ch. ↩
- The extension clause "et ce qui leur est assimilable" and the absence of case law. The same wording appears in several Valais communal police regulations: Salvan at art. 57, the regulation shared by Vouvry, St-Gingolph, Port-Valais and Vionnaz at art. 56 al. 2, Evolène at art. 54 al. 2 and Anniviers at art. 58 al. 1. Vouvry is the only commune on record to have stated a reading of it, and reads it as including the bivouac. A search of the Swiss case-law index returns no decision construing the phrase, so its reach over a tentless bivouac is untested rather than settled. For contrast, where a commune intends to exempt the bivouac it names it: the Vals police regulation in Graubünden exempts the Biwak expressly. entscheidsuche.ch. ↩
- Règlement de police de la Commune de Val de Bagnes, the provisions on who may authorise. Art. 2 al. 2: "L'autorité communale (ci-après : « l'Autorité ») est le conseil municipal." Art. 2 al. 3 allows the Authority to delegate its competences only to its members or its services. Art. 4 al. 2: "L'Autorité peut intervenir sur le domaine privé dans le cadre de ses compétences." Read together with art. 55 al. 2, only the conseil municipal can designate an authorised emplacement, and private ownership does not put ground outside the regulation, so consent from a landowner, an alp tenant or a consortage is not a route to a lawful night. valdebagnes.ch. ↩
- Penalties, and what is known about enforcement. Règlement de police de la Commune de Val de Bagnes, art. 77 al. 1: the fine "ne peut être inférieur à 10 francs, ni supérieur à 10'000 francs", with a cap of CHF 1'000 for minors. That is a statutory range, not a tariff, and the commune publishes no camping tariff, so no typical figure can be quoted. Art. 75 al. 3: contraventions are punishable "même si elles procèdent d'une simple négligence". No Swiss press report, fine record, patrol report or sign inventory was found for the Corbassière sector, so enforcement at this col is unknown rather than known to be light. valdebagnes.ch. ↩
- Plan directeur cantonal du Valais, fiche de coordination B.3 "Camping". Valais has no cantonal wild-camping ban binding the public; the structure plan hands the matter to the communes at letter k), which provides that the communes "fixent les prescriptions relatives au camping sauvage dans leur règlement de police ou autre règlement communal". The cantonal service's camping web page is currently flagged as under revision and no longer carries this delegation sentence, which is why fiche B.3 lit. k) is cited here rather than that page. vs.ch. ↩
- Verbier and Val de Bagnes Tourisme, "Respect Nature". The page states that camping is prohibited throughout the municipality except at Bonatchiesse, that bivouac is strictly forbidden inside the Haut Val de Bagnes protected area, and that outside that area a bivouac, defined as sleeping under the stars without a tent, may be considered above the treeline, "in compliance with current regulations". The publisher is Verbier Tourisme SA, a public limited company acting as the destination marketing organisation, not the commune and not the conseil municipal, which art. 2 al. 2 of the communal police regulation makes the sole Authority. The page is therefore evidence of how the destination talks about bivouac, not a communal permission, and its own qualifier refers back to the regulation. verbier.ch. ↩
- Distances from the pin to the nearest protection perimeters, measured by ring sampling against the federal layers. The proglacial alluvial zone of the Glacier de Corbassière, federal inventory of alluvial zones of national importance object CH 1168, begins about 330 m north-west of the col; ring sampling at 50 m resolution puts it at about 350 m and finer bisection at 329 m, hence "about 330 metres". The Glacier du Petit Combin alluvial zone, object CH 1167, is about 730 m away. BLN object 1703 Haut Val de Bagnes is 2'229 m away and federal game reserve 36 Mauvoisin 2'014 m. None of them reaches the col itself. map.geo.admin.ch. ↩
- Règlement communal de construction et de zones de Bagnes, art. 116, zone de protection de la nature. The two alluvial objects near the col are re-enacted communally under this article, which provides that "Toute modification même mineure de l'état des lieux dans un autre but est interdite" and that "Les constructions sont interdites". So the glacier forefield north-west of the col carries a communal prohibition of its own on top of the federal inventory listing, independent of the camping ban in the police regulation. valdebagnes.ch. ↩
- Terrain and access at the col, from the swisstopo height service and the national map. The saddle carries a flat north-south ribbon about 120 m long: 2646.6 m at 40 m north of the pin, 2648.1 m at the pin, 2648.2 m and 2648.9 m at 40 m and 80 m south. It is narrow east-west: 40 m east the ground is at 2628.8 m and falls hard toward the Glacier de Corbassière, while 40 to 80 m west it rises onto the ridge. The ground is bare high-alpine rock and moraine, wind-exposed, without shelter and without water at the col, and a marked path passes within 400 m. The col lies on the crossing from the Cabane Brunet, about 2.7 km away, to the Cabane FXB Panossière, 1'785 m east-south-east, ground also used by the Tour des Combins. geo.admin.ch. ↩
- Cabane FXB Panossière, 2'645 m, 1'785 m east-south-east of the col on the same crossing. 75 places, dormitories with duvets, wardens Henri and Sylvie Chastellain, +41 27 771 33 22, info@panossiere.ch. The 2026 season runs from 28 March to 30 May and from 27 June to 26 September, and advance booking is required. This is the lawful bed closest to the col and sits at essentially the same altitude. panossiere.ch. ↩
- Camping Forêt des Mélèzes, Bonatchiesse, Route de Mauvoisin 533, 1948 Fionnay, +41 27 778 12 40. This is the only authorised camping place in the commune of Val de Bagnes and therefore the "emplacement autorisé expressément désigné" that art. 55 al. 2 of the communal police regulation refers to. Every other pitch in the commune, at any altitude, is outside a designated place. bonatchiesse.ch. ↩
- Emergency bivouac. A genuine emergency bivouac, forced by injury, a sudden change of weather or nightfall, is lawful in the Swiss mountains and is not what a camping ban is aimed at; it is the standard exception and is distinct from a planned overnight camp. Walking up in the evening with a tent to sleep on a flat col is a planned camp, not an emergency, and falls under art. 55 al. 2. General mountaineering and SAC practice. sac-cas.ch. ↩