Wild camping at the Col du Tsaté: the commune line runs through the pass, and both sides forbid camping

Two communes meet on this col, and both forbid camping

Wild camping at the Col du Tsaté usually gets asked as a question about which side to sleep on. That instinct is right in general and useless here, because the answer is that both sides are banned and the boundary is not where people assume it is.

The col sits at about 2'868 metres on the ridge between the Val d'Hérens and the Val d'Anniviers, WGS84 46.100349 / 7.559696, LV95 2'609'361 / 1'105'434. Checked against the federal communal boundary layer filtered to the current year, the pin itself is Evolène, and so is the level saddle floor 100 to 300 metres west and the ground 150 metres south. Step 100 metres east, 50 metres north or 75 metres southeast and you are in Anniviers. The line runs through the col, not along the ridge above it, which is why the usual trick of walking a hundred metres into the next commune produces nothing here.¹

Evolène's Règlement communal de police was adopted on 20 March 2018, approved by the Assemblée primaire on 13 June 2018 and homologated by the Conseil d'Etat on 21 November 2018. Its art. 54 is headed "Camping, pique-nique et caravaning".

"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 communal de police de la Commune d'Evolène, art. 54 al. 2. Camping, caravanning and what is comparable to them are forbidden outside the authorised places expressly designated as such by the Authority.

The reach of that sentence is set two pages earlier, and it is the whole communal territory. Art. 4 al. 1 reads that the provisions of the regulation apply "sur l'ensemble du territoire de la Commune d'Evolène", and al. 2 adds that the communal authority may act on private ground within its competences. So there is no altitude above which the regulation stops, and no private plot inside the commune that sits outside it. Breaches are fined under art. 78 al. 1, which sets a range that "ne peut être inférieur à 10 francs, ni supérieur à 10'000 francs", with minors capped at CHF 1'000.²

Anniviers' Règlement de police was adopted by the Assemblée primaire on 15 December 2014 and homologated on 26 August 2015. Its art. 58 is the mirror image, with one word more.

"Le camping, le caravaning et ce qui leur est assimilable sont interdits sur le domaine public et privé en dehors des emplacements autorisés, expressément désignés comme tels par l'Autorité."Règlement de police de la Commune d'Anniviers, art. 58 al. 1. Camping, caravanning and what is comparable to them are forbidden on public and private ground outside the authorised places expressly designated as such by the Authority.

"Sur le domaine public et privé" closes the door that stays open at some other Swiss spots. Where the rule is built around the owner's yes, as it is in Appenzell, asking the right farmer is the legal route. Here the commune has forbidden the conduct on the owner's ground as well, so his permission cannot restore what the regulation has taken away. Art. 1 al. 2 gives the regulation the whole communal territory in the same words Evolène uses. Art. 58 al. 2 adds a step Evolène does not have: after a warning to remove the tent or vehicle within two hours, the police may remove it at the offender's cost. The fine ceiling is art. 78 al. 1, an amount that "n'excédera pas Fr. 5'000.-".³

One honest note on those numbers. Both figures are statutory ranges, not price lists. Neither commune publishes a standard tariff for camping sauvage, unlike Zermatt where a per-tent figure is documented, so there is no typical amount to quote you and I am not going to invent one. What the numbers tell you is the size of the frame, not the size of the bill.²³

Valais has no cantonal ban, and that is exactly why the communal article decides

"Valais has no camping law" is true, and it is the single most misread fact in Swiss wild camping. It is true because it was checked by enumeration rather than by failing to find something. Eight cantonal acts were read in full through the cantonal legal collection and term-counted: the Loi sur la police cantonale (550.1), the act on the protection of nature, landscape and sites (451.1), the forest act (921.1), the hunting act (922.1), the building act (705.1), the tourism act (935.1), the LHR on lodging and catering (935.3) and the building ordinance (705.100). The word bivouac appears zero times in all eight.⁴

The one tent provision in cantonal law points the other way from the one people expect. Art. 17 al. 2 let. a of the building ordinance makes a building permit necessary for "l'installation de caravanes, de tentes et autres en dehors d'une place de camping autorisée, si leur durée d'installation dépasse 3 semaines ou leur nombre est supérieur à 12". One tent for one night is far below both thresholds, so no cantonal permit is engaged at the Col du Tsaté. Read the provision for what it shows rather than what it forbids: the canton regulates scale and duration, and leaves everything under those thresholds to somebody else.⁴

The canton says who that somebody else is, in writing. The cantonal structure plan, sheet B.3 "Camping", in force and approved by the Confederation on 27 April 2020, sets out a mandate to the communes. Letter k) of that mandate says communes "fixent les prescriptions relatives au camping sauvage dans leur règlement de police ou autre règlement communal". That is the sentence almost nobody reads, and it is why a communal police article is not a side rule here but the wild-camping norm itself.⁵

So the chain is complete and it is short. The canton declines to regulate a single night and tells the communes to do it. Evolène did it in art. 54 al. 2. Anniviers did it in art. 58 al. 1. The col is split between exactly those two communes. There is no third layer to appeal to and no cantonal silence to shelter in.⁵

A tent is caught. A bivvy bag is an untested edge, not a way through

The decisive words in both articles are the last four before the verb: "et ce qui leur est assimilable". That clause is an express extension. It does not list camping and caravanning and stop; it reaches whatever is comparable to them. A pitched tent for one night is comparable to camping on any reading, which is why the tent question is not close on either side of this col.²³

It is worth seeing what the opposite drafting looks like. In Vals, in Graubünden, the communal police ordinance bans camping across the whole commune and then writes the bivouac back out of the prohibition in so many words. That is a commune deciding that a bivouac is not camping. Evolène and Anniviers wrote the clause that runs the other way. Same instrument, opposite result.

Now the part I cannot settle, said plainly. Neither regulation contains the word bivouac anywhere; both were searched in full. So the question of whether a fully tentless bivouac, nothing erected, a sleeping bag on the grass, falls under "ce qui leur est assimilable" has no answer in the text of either regulation. The only Valais commune that defines the term at all is Zermatt, whose Polizeireglement 2022 art. 43 Abs. 1 describes camping as staying "in Zelten, Wohnwagen oder ähnlichen mobilen und unbeweglichen Einrichtungen", tents, caravans or similar mobile and immobile installations. On that definition a person in a sleeping bag with nothing put up is arguably outside the concept. But Zermatt's definition is Zermatt's, no Valais court or commentary has construed "ce qui leur est assimilable", and neither Evolène nor Anniviers has said what it means.

That is an untested edge, and an untested edge is not a plan. If you sleep out here without a tent you are betting on a reading nobody has confirmed, in front of an authority that has written a deliberately wide clause. It is published here because leaving it out would be dishonest, not because it is a route. The one night out that no Swiss rule fines is a genuine emergency bivouac forced by injury, weather or darkness, and that is a different thing from an evening walk-in with a sleeping bag.¹⁰

Why consent does not help here, and what to do instead

At a lot of Swiss spots the useful answer is a name and a phone number. At the Fälensee or the Seealpsee the legal route is the owner's yes, because the rule there is built around it. Neither of these two regulations has that exception. Zermatt's art. 43 Abs. 3 shows what one looks like, occasional camping away from licensed sites with the landowner's consent, and it is precisely what Evolène and Anniviers did not write. Anniviers went further and extended its ban to private ground expressly.³

The only key either regulation offers is a designated emplacement, and only one body can turn it. Both articles forbid camping outside places "expressément désignés comme tels par l'Autorité", and l'Autorité means the Conseil municipal, not a landowner, not an alp tenant, not a hut warden. Neither commune has designated an emplacement anywhere near this col. Anniviers published its stationnement information on 10 July 2025 and what it designates is camper-van and van aires: Grimentz Bouesses 2, Zinal Montferrier Sud, and Moiry. There is no tent or bivouac emplacement on that list, and nothing above the valley floor.⁶

Evolène, for its part, states the position in its own voice. On the commune's own site: "Le camping sauvage reste interdit sur le territoire de la Commune d'Evolène et nos visiteurs sont invités à rejoindre l'un de ces 3 points d'accueil - Evolène, Molignon ou Arolla." That is an official communal news item whose subject is the valley campsites and vans after the June 2024 floods, not hikers above the treeline, and it carries no weight at all on the tent-versus-bivouac question. It is worth one line, and one line only: it shows the commune reads its own art. 54 as covering the whole territory.⁷

No fire. This is bare alpine ground at 2'868 metres with nothing on it worth burning and no wood to burn, and Valais runs fire bans through dry spells every summer. A gas stove covers everything you need up here.⁹

What the ground says, and why the verdict is Illegal

The terrain is the reason this question gets asked at all. The saddle floor running west from the col is essentially level for about 200 metres, and that ground is Evolène. The ground 25 to 75 metres southeast is also near-level, and that ground is Anniviers. North and northwest the slope rises hard into the ridge, and southwest it falls away hard. So a comfortable, obvious pitch does exist here, which is exactly why people plan around it, and both candidate pitches sit inside a municipal ban.¹

Two practical facts before anyone romanticises the spot. There is no water at the col: the Lac du Tsaté is about 850 metres away and roughly 370 metres lower, down on the Evolène side, so everything you drink is carried up or fetched with a serious descent and reascent. And at 2'868 metres this is a wind gap on a ridge, which is what a col is for. It is exposed in a way the flat ground flatters.¹

Everything above the commune came back empty, and the emptiness was made to mean something. Identify at the pin with zero tolerance returns no federal game reserve, no wildlife rest zone, no BLN object, no floodplain, no raised bog, no fenland, no amphibian site, no dry meadow and no park of national importance. Each query ran alongside an invalid layer as a control, which returns HTTP 400, so an empty answer is a genuine absence rather than a failed request. No cantonal Valais réserve de faune surfaced either. Nothing federal or cantonal adds to the ban here, and nothing removes it.¹

On enforcement, the honest statement is an absence in the record. No documented patrol, no fine and no sign specific to this col was found. That is not the same as a place nobody watches, and it is certainly not permission: it is simply what the record shows, and it would be dishonest to dress it up as active high-altitude enforcement in either direction. The verdict does not rest on enforcement anyway.

It rests on a named norm that reaches this exact ground, twice. Evolène art. 54 al. 2 with art. 4 al. 1 behind it, and Anniviers art. 58 al. 1 with art. 1 al. 2 behind it, both with fines attached, both territory-wide, and the boundary between them running through the saddle. There is no side, no consent, no designated emplacement and no cantonal silence to shelter in. That is what Illegal means on our scale, and it is what this col is.²³

Where you can legally sleep

• Cabane de Moiry CAS, 2'825 m, commune of Anniviers, about 2.97 km straight-line from the col. 72 beds in the old refuge plus eight four-bed rooms in the annex, open mid-June to end September. Booking at booking.cabane-moiry.ch, last-minute under 24 hours on +41 27 475 45 34. For anyone crossing the col eastbound on the Haute Route or the Via Valais, this is the next stage anyway⁸.
• Cabane des Becs de Bosson, 2'985 m, commune of Saint-Martin, about 7.85 km away, roughly 62 beds, +41 78 743 79 89, info@cabanedesbecs.ch. Further out, and the sensible target if you are heading west rather than east⁸.
• An authorised campsite in the Val d'Hérens: Camping d'Evolène, Camping de Molignon at Les Haudères, partially reopened by cantonal decision of 18 June 2026, or the provisional area at Arolla near the Hôtel de la Tza. These are the "emplacements autorisés" the regulation actually means⁹.
• Not the saddle west of the col. It is level, it is obvious, and it is Evolène, where art. 54 al. 2 forbids camping across the whole communal territory.
• Not the flat ground southeast either. That is Anniviers, where art. 58 al. 1 forbids the same thing on public and private ground alike and the police may have a tent removed at your cost after a two-hour warning.

General rules for wild camping

This applies wherever you are genuinely allowed to sleep, which at the Col du Tsaté means a bunk at the Cabane de Moiry or a pitch at an authorised campsite in the valley, not the saddle. It is not legal text, it is decency and common sense on high, bare ground that carries a lot of traffic in a short season.

• 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, cantonal fire bans come and go through the summer, and hut seasons, prices and campsite openings are updated, so material written about this area earlier may be out of date. The Camping de Molignon in particular is operating under a partial reopening. Before every tour, check the current sources yourself and follow instructions on site. Whether a fully tentless bivouac falls under these two articles has not been decided by any Valais court, and this article does not pretend otherwise. 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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