As of: 8 August 2026

Wild camping at the Dent de Jaman

Nothing above Montreux forbids one night out. The Dent de Jaman still refuses, because it is a rock tooth with no ground flat enough to lie on anywhere near the top. Here is what the local rules actually say, and where the nearest usable ground is.

Leon Helg
Leon Helg · Legal situation checked in August 2026 · Published 8 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 rule that applies above Montreux, and it is not a ban

Start with the thing most people get wrong. Wild camping at the Dent de Jaman sits in canton Vaud, and canton Vaud has a reputation online for banning wild camping outright. That reputation is not built on a citation, because there is no cantonal Vaud prohibition to cite. What exists is communal, and above Montreux it is unusually mild.

Montreux does not write its own police regulation any more. It is one of nine communes in the Association de communes Securite Riviera, and the association's Reglement general de police intercommunal of 15 April 2010 replaced the member communes' own police provisions in the domains delegated to it. Art. 94 says so in as many words, which means there is exactly one text to read here rather than a communal rule hiding under an intercommunal one.1

Art. 33 is the whole of it, and it is three sentences long.

"Celui qui, avec l'assentiment du proprietaire du fonds ou, le cas echeant, du fermier ou du locataire, campe plus de quatre jours hors d'une place specialement amenagee a cet effet doit obtenir une autorisation de l'ASR. L'autorisation peut notamment etre refusee lorsque le campeur ne peut beneficier, a proximite, d'une installation sanitaire. Il est interdit de camper sur la voie publique et ses abords ainsi que dans les forets."Art. 33 RGPi: anyone who, with the consent of the landowner or, as the case may be, the farmer or the tenant, camps for more than four days outside a site specially arranged for it must obtain a permit from the ASR. The permit may be refused in particular where the camper has no sanitary installation nearby. It is forbidden to camp on the public road and its surroundings, and in forests.

Read the three sentences separately, because they do different jobs. The first creates a permit duty that starts after four days and assumes you already have the landowner's agreement. The second is about that permit. The third is the only outright prohibition in the article, and it reaches exactly two things: the public road with its immediate surroundings, and forest.

A single night on open alp pasture, away from the road, out of the trees, with the person who works that ground having said yes, falls under none of the three. That is not a loophole reading. It is what happens when a commune writes a rule aimed at people parking a caravan in a field for a fortnight, which is plainly what the four-day threshold and the sanitary-installation clause are for.

Check the version, because the obvious copy is the wrong one

The RGPi has been amended three times since 2010, and the amendment history matters for anyone quoting it. November 2016 adopted art. 93, changed art. 65 and 71, repealed art. 85 and renamed "Police Riviera" to "ASR" throughout, which is the only time art. 33 was touched at all. June 2021 repealed art. 78. April 2025 adopted art. 30bis and nothing else. Art. 33 has therefore been substantively unchanged since 2010. The version that comes up first when you search for this regulation is the superseded 2016 consolidation, and the current ratified text is a scanned PDF with no searchable text layer, which is presumably why the current wording is not widely quoted.1

What it would cost, and why nobody can write you a ticket

Say you ignored the third sentence and pitched in the trees below the col. What happens is worth knowing, because it is less automatic than people assume.

The RGPi has its own fixed-penalty schedule, art. 93, which lists the offences that can be settled on the spot under the cantonal Loi sur les amendes d'ordre communales. It is a specific list: urinating on public ground CHF 200, spitting CHF 100, littering CHF 100 to 150, fly-posting CHF 150, then a set of cemetery and harbour offences. There is no camping entry anywhere in it.1

So no officer on the Riviera can hand you a slip for a tent. A breach of art. 33 has to run as an ordinary communal contravention, and the amount then comes from cantonal law:

"Les contraventions reprimees par l'autorite municipale sont passibles d'une amende de 500 francs au plus, contre chaque contrevenant, sous reserve des cas ou la loi prevoit un montant inferieur. L'amende peut etre portee a 1000 francs en cas de recidive ou de contravention continue."Art. 25 LContr: contraventions punished by the municipal authority carry a fine of at most CHF 500 per offender, raised to CHF 1000 in the case of recidivism or a continuing contravention.

CHF 500 at most, CHF 1000 if you make a habit of it or refuse to pack up.2 That is the ceiling for the two situations art. 33 actually forbids. It is not a number that attaches to a night on a pasture, because a night on a pasture is not one of the two situations.

Worth saying plainly, though, so nobody reads the above as an invitation: the reason a commune bothers writing a road-and-forest ban is that roadsides and woods are where the problems happen. Montreux has had wild camping on the political agenda recently, mostly about vehicles staying put for weeks, which is precisely the behaviour the four-day clause was drafted against.

The maps come back clean, and then the mountain answers

The federal layers were queried at the summit itself, LV95 2'564'357 / 1'143'841, terrain height 1874.8 m, commune of Montreux at the pin and for 500 metres in every direction. The result is one of the emptiest in this series.

No federal game reserve, and the nearest one is 6.1 kilometres away, so the CHF 150 federal tent tariff that decides so many articles on this site simply is not in play here. No wildlife rest zone; the nearest is Tete des Chatelards at 3.3 kilometres. No floodplain, no raised or flat bog, no mire landscape, no dry grassland, no waterbird reserve, no forest reserve, no Emerald site. The one federal object that comes close is the BLN landscape Tour d'Ai / Dent de Corjon, whose boundary runs 769 metres from the summit, and the pin is outside it. BLN status binds authorities in their own decisions in any case, it does not fine a walker.3

Two controls make those zeros worth something. Every query ran alongside a deliberately invalid layer id, which the service answers with HTTP 400, so an empty result could be told apart from a broken one. And the same BLN layer was queried at two points where it must return something, the Lavaux vineyards fifteen kilometres west and the Säntis massif at the other end of the country. Both hit. The layer is live, and the zero at the Dent de Jaman is a real outside.3

The summit does sit inside the Parc naturel regional Gruyere Pays-d'Enhaut. That is a label under the federal nature protection act rather than a prohibition regime, and the park's own bivouac sheet is explicit about which zones are closed: federal game reserves, nature reserves and tranquillity zones. None of the three reaches this ridge, and the park's own map shows the Jaman area carrying no overlay at all.6

On the cantonal layer there is nothing either. Vaud's Loi sur la protection de la nature, des monuments et des sites is the act you would expect to carry a camping rule, and a full-text read of it returns no occurrence of camping, bivouac, tent or caravan anywhere. Vaud's actual camping legislation governs residential camping grounds and caravan zones, which is a different subject entirely.4

And then the slope, which is where this article turns

Everything above says yes. The ground says no, and it is not close. A digital elevation model sampled on a 25 metre grid across a 600 metre box centred on the summit gives the following.5

Slope at the pin: 54.6 degrees. The neighbouring cells run from 49 to 72 degrees. There is no ground under 12 degrees anywhere inside that box, and the flattest cell in it is 17.3 degrees, 327 metres away and 140 metres lower. Widen the search to 2.4 kilometres and the nearest ground under 10 degrees appears 640 to 775 metres out and 360 to 400 metres below, at 1471 to 1513 metres, which is the shelf around the Col de Jaman.

The route description agrees with the arithmetic. The Dent de Jaman is graded T3, the last section is exposed and fitted with chains, and the top is a narrow rock arete. It is a fine summit and a genuinely good hike. It is not a place where a human being can lie down.

That is the verdict in one sentence: nothing here forbids a night at the Dent de Jaman, and there is nowhere at the Dent de Jaman to spend one.

Not at the col, and that one is worth spelling out, because it is the obvious flat ground and it is the single piece of ground art. 33 names. The Col de Jaman at 1512 metres has a road, a large car park, a restaurant, a working dairy and a railway stop. That is "la voie publique et ses abords" in any reading, it is below the local tree line, and it fails the basic test of whether anyone would want to sleep there even if they could.

The consent route, and here it is unusually concrete. The commune of Montreux owns fifteen alpages on its own territory, leased each summer to amodiataires who graze cattle and make cheese up there. The Jaman alpages are among them, and the commune's Revon chalet at the col is its demonstration dairy. So art. 33's chain of "the landowner or, as the case may be, the farmer or the tenant" is not an abstraction here: it is the commune, and it is the person working that alp this summer.7

Who to ask. For the ground itself, the owner is the Commune de Montreux, +41 21 962 77 77, commune@montreux.ch, which manages the fifteen alpages and their leases. In summer the faster and more useful conversation is with whoever is on the alp: the buvette at the Col de Jaman and the Revon dairy are both staffed through the grazing season, roughly late May to mid September, and they will know who holds that pasture. Ask to put one small tent up for one night, well away from the herd, the huts and the water troughs, and say when you will be gone. There is no published pitch fee for these alpages and we are not going to invent one. If you want to thank them, buy their cheese at the col.

The honest answer for this particular mountain is a bunk. The Cabane de Jaman sits at 1540 metres at the col, run by the CAS Jaman section, with 30 places in two dormitories, an equipped kitchen, hot water, a shower, a wood stove and a terrace. It is self-catering and it is open to everybody, not only club members: CHF 12 for CAS Jaman members, CHF 20 for other CAS members, CHF 24 for non-members, half price for children between 6 and 16. Open roughly mid May to mid October. Bookings and questions go to Marlyse Vuadens, 021 943 17 51, chaletjaman@cas-jaman.ch.8

Sleeping there and walking up for sunrise is the version of this plan that works. The Dent is forty-five minutes above the col, and being on top at first light over Lake Geneva is the thing people actually came for.

One correction worth carrying away, whichever way you go. The park's own bivouac leaflet lists the communal camping rules for Chateau-d'Oex and Corbeyrier and stops there. Montreux is inside the park perimeter and its rule, art. 33 RGPi, is not on that sheet. If you asked the park what applies at Jaman, you would not have been told about the four-day threshold. Now you have been.

If you want the same question answered where the ground does cooperate, Le Grammont is across the Rhone from here, and the Brienzer Rothorn is the same shape of answer as this one: a summit that says no, with a lawful night a short walk away.

General rules for wild camping

This applies wherever you do end up sleeping outside around Jaman, and on a working alp it matters more than usual. The pasture you are standing on is somebody's summer income.

  • 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.

Intercommunal and communal regulations change, and the Riviera regulation has been amended three times since 2010. Check the current ratified version in the association's own collection before relying on any of this, and follow instructions on site. A genuine emergency bivouac in distress is a separate question from a planned camp, and the terrain findings in this article are a description of the mountain, not a safety assessment of your route. 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

Can you wild camp at the Dent de Jaman?
Nothing forbids it, and there is still nowhere to do it. No federal, cantonal or communal norm prohibits a single night at this summit. But the pin is a limestone tooth at 1875 m whose slope is 54.6 degrees, there is no ground under 12 degrees anywhere within 300 metres, and the nearest ground you could lie on is 640 metres away and about 370 metres lower. The route is graded T3 with chains on the exposed final section and a narrow rock arete at the top. The verdict is it depends because the lawful route runs through the landowner's consent, and because that consented pitch is on the alp pasture rather than on the summit block.
Is wild camping banned in Montreux or in canton Vaud?
No, and the rule that does apply is milder than its reputation. Montreux is a member of the Association de communes Securite Riviera, whose Reglement general de police intercommunal of 15 April 2010 (current ratified version 10 April 2025) replaced the member communes' own police provisions under art. 94. Art. 33 requires a permit from the ASR only for camping of more than four days with the landowner's consent, and prohibits camping outright only on the public road with its surroundings and in forests. Canton Vaud's Loi sur la protection de la nature, des monuments et des sites (RSV 450.11) contains no camping provision at all.
What would a fine be if you camped there anyway?
At most CHF 500, and nobody can issue it on the spot. Art. 93 RGPi is the fixed-penalty schedule under the cantonal Loi sur les amendes d'ordre communales, and it has no camping entry: it tariffs urinating, spitting, littering, fly-posting and a set of cemetery and harbour offences. A breach of art. 33 therefore runs as an ordinary communal contravention under art. 25 of the Vaud Loi sur les contraventions (LContr, RSV 312.11), which caps the fine at CHF 500 per offender, raised to CHF 1000 for recidivism or a continuing contravention. That exposure only arises for the two things art. 33 forbids, namely the public road with its surroundings and forest.
Is the Dent de Jaman inside a protected area?
It is inside a regional nature park, which does not ban camping, and outside everything that would. Queried at the summit, every federal inventory is empty: the nearest federal game reserve is 6.1 km away, the nearest wildlife rest zone 3.3 km, and the BLN landscape Tour d'Ai and Dent de Corjon has its boundary 769 m from the pin. The summit does lie within the Parc naturel regional Gruyere Pays-d'Enhaut, but a regional park is a label under federal nature protection law rather than a prohibition regime, and the park's own bivouac sheet closes only federal game reserves, nature reserves and tranquillity zones, none of which reach this ridge.
Where can I sleep near the Dent de Jaman?
The Cabane de Jaman, or consented alp pasture, but not the col itself. The Cabane de Jaman at 1540 m at the col is run by the CAS Jaman section, has 30 places in two dormitories with a kitchen, shower and wood stove, is open to non-members at CHF 24 a night, and runs roughly mid May to mid October (Marlyse Vuadens, 021 943 17 51, chaletjaman@cas-jaman.ch). For a tent, the commune of Montreux owns fifteen alpages up here and leases them to summer amodiataires, so ask the commune or the people working the alp, which is exactly the consent art. 33 assumes. Do not pitch at the Col de Jaman itself: it is a road pass with a car park, a restaurant, a dairy and a railway stop, and the public road with its surroundings is the one place art. 33 expressly forbids.
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. Reglement general de police de l'Association de communes Securite Riviera (RGPi) of 15 April 2010, approved by the Chef du Departement de l'interieur on 2 June 2010, in the ratified version of 10 April 2025. Montreux is one of the member communes. Art. 33: "Celui qui, avec l'assentiment du proprietaire du fonds ou, le cas echeant, du fermier ou du locataire, campe plus de quatre jours hors d'une place specialement amenagee a cet effet doit obtenir une autorisation de l'ASR. L'autorisation peut notamment etre refusee lorsque le campeur ne peut beneficier, a proximite, d'une installation sanitaire. Il est interdit de camper sur la voie publique et ses abords ainsi que dans les forets." Art. 94: the regulation repeals all provisions of the member communes' police regulations enacted in the domains delegated to the association, namely public security, order and quiet, the emergency service and the policing of economic activity, or contrary to the regulation. Art. 93 is the fixed-penalty schedule under the LAOC and contains no camping entry: its list covers urinating (CHF 200), spitting (CHF 100), depositing excrement (CHF 150), non-conforming disposal of waste (CHF 150), mixing sorted waste (CHF 150), dropping litter (CHF 100), fly-posting (CHF 150), and offences in cemeteries and harbours. Amendment history recorded in the closing pages: 24 November 2016 (adoption of art. 93, amendment of art. 65 and 71, repeal of art. 85, and replacement of the designation "Police Riviera" by "ASR" at art. 3, 15, 16, 32, 33, 34, 41, 51, 54, 60, 62, 66, 67 and 86), 10 June 2021 (repeal of art. 78) and 10 April 2025 (adoption of art. 30bis). Art. 33 is therefore substantively unchanged since 2010. The current ratified document is a scanned PDF without a text layer. securite-riviera.ch. ↩
  2. Loi vaudoise sur les contraventions (LContr, RSV 312.11) of 19 May 2009, in force since 1 January 2011. Art. 25 "Montant de l'amende", para. 1: "Les contraventions reprimees par l'autorite municipale sont passibles d'une amende de 500 francs au plus, contre chaque contrevenant, sous reserve des cas ou la loi prevoit un montant inferieur." Para. 2: "L'amende peut etre portee a 1000 francs en cas de recidive ou de contravention continue. Il y a recidive lorsque le contrevenant a deja ete condamne pour une contravention du meme genre dans l'annee qui precede la nouvelle contravention." Art. 26 allows the municipal authority to order community work of at most twenty-four hours in place of the fine, with the offender's agreement. This is the residual route for a breach of a communal or intercommunal police regulation that carries no fixed-penalty tariff of its own. lexfind.ch. ↩
  3. Loi vaudoise sur la protection de la nature, des monuments et des sites (LPNMS, RSV 450.11). Full-text read of the consolidated act: the words camping, camper, bivouac, tente and caravane do not appear anywhere in it. The act deals with the protection of sites and natural monuments, biotopes, flora and fauna, archaeological objects and the procedures attached to them, and it does prohibit abandoning materials and waste of any kind outside the places designated for it, but it creates no camping offence. Canton Vaud's camping legislation proper concerns residential camping grounds and caravan zones and their planning treatment, not a rucksack and a tent for one night. lexfind.ch. ↩
  4. Official federal geodata, queried 8 August 2026. Identify run at the summit, LV95 2'564'357.0 / 1'143'840.8 (WGS84 46.44495 / 6.97480), terrain height 1874.8 m via the federal height service, commune of Montreux at the pin, at the Col de Jaman and 500 m to the north east, with Haut-Intyamon (FR) beginning about 1.5 km north east. Empty at the pin: federal game reserves, wildlife rest zones, BLN, floodplains, raised bogs, fens, mire landscapes, dry grasslands and pastures, waterbird and migratory-bird reserves, forest reserves and Emerald sites. Nearest objects, measured to the polygon edge: federal game reserve 6'147 m, wildlife rest zone Tete des Chatelards no. 2.0 (VD) 3'326 m, BLN site Tour d'Ai and Dent de Corjon 769 m, all outside. Every query ran alongside a deliberately invalid layer id, which this service answers with HTTP 400, because a wrong layer id is otherwise indistinguishable from an empty answer. The BLN layer was additionally verified positive at two control points, the Lavaux vineyards about 15 km west and the Säntis massif, both of which return their site, so the zero at the summit is an outside rather than a silent failure. map.geo.admin.ch. ↩
  5. Terrain analysis from the official federal elevation model, queried 8 August 2026 through the federal profile service. A 25 m grid over a 600 m box centred on the summit (625 sampled points) gives a slope of 54.6 degrees at the pin, neighbouring cells between 49 and 72 degrees, no cell under 12 degrees anywhere in the box, and a flattest cell of 17.3 degrees at 327 m distance and 140 m lower. A 50 m grid over a 2.4 km box puts the nearest cell under 10 degrees at 640 to 775 m distance and 360 to 400 m lower, at 1471 to 1513 m, corresponding to the shelf around the Col de Jaman (1512 m). Independently, the Swiss Alpine Club course portal grades the Dent de Jaman T3 and describes an exposed final section fitted with chains and a narrow rock arete at the summit. geo.admin.ch. ↩
  6. Parc naturel regional Gruyere Pays-d'Enhaut, information sheet "Camping sauvage et bivouac" with its zone map, produced by the park in 2022 from data of the federal environment office, swisstopo and the cantons of Bern, Fribourg and Vaud. The sheet divides the perimeter into recommended, discouraged and forbidden zones. The forbidden zones are the federal game reserves ("Zones brunes: districts francs federaux, interdiction de camping"), the nature reserves ("Zones hachurees vert: reserves naturelles, interdiction de camping", with additional dog, path and fire restrictions at Pierreuse and Vanil Noir) and the tranquillity zones. Beyond those zones the sheet lists communal regulations for two communes only, Chateau-d'Oex and Corbeyrier, and does not mention Montreux, although the Jaman ridge lies inside the park perimeter. Its recommendations include consulting the owner or operator of the land, keeping out of livestock enclosures, keeping away from the upper forest limit and other sensitive habitats, and carrying out all waste. Park information: +41 26 924 76 93. gruyerepaysdenhaut.ch. ↩
  7. Commune de Montreux, "Alpages". The commune counts fifteen characteristic alpages with their shingled chalets on its territory, and during the summer season these alpages are leased to amodiataires who practise cattle rearing and cheese making. The Revon chalet at the Col de Jaman has been converted so that cheese making, its storage and direct sale can be shown to visitors, next to the Manoire restaurant; cheese is sold daily through the grazing season, from the end of May to mid September. Commune switchboard +41 21 962 77 77, commune@montreux.ch. This is the ownership structure that art. 33 RGPi presupposes when it speaks of the landowner "or, as the case may be, the farmer or the tenant". montreux.ch. ↩
  8. Cabane de Jaman, Club Alpin Suisse section Jaman. At 1540 m at the Col de Jaman, national map sheet 1264. Thirty places in two dormitories, equipped kitchen, electricity, hot water in summer, shower, dining room for forty, wood stove, terrace and outside grill; self-catering, with a booking calendar on the section's site. Open to non-members. Rates CHF 12 for members of CAS Jaman, CHF 20 for members of other CAS sections and CHF 24 for non-members, half price for children between 6 and 16. Closed from mid October to mid May. Hut manager Marlyse Vuadens, 021 943 17 51, chaletjaman@cas-jaman.ch. cas-jaman.ch. ↩