Wild camping on the Erigsmatt
The Erigsmatt is the flattest ground at the head of the Bisistal, and 99.5 per cent of it lies inside federal game reserve no. 9. Free tenting and camping is prohibited there, bivouac included, at a fixed penalty of CHF 150. Only the canton of Schwyz can allow an exception.
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 the Erigsmatt is, and why you would want to sleep there
The Erigsmatt is not a summit and not a lake. It is a named area, a high alp basin at the head of the Bisistal above Muotathal, and the federal gazetteer records it as one polygon of 7.59 square kilometres with its label point at LV95 2'714'531 / 1'200'809, 2'076 metres. Bös Fulen, the highest mountain in canton Schwyz, stands 2 km north of it.1
The ground is the reason this article exists. A 25 metre scan across the whole named area puts 72 hectares under five degrees, with the flattest cells at 0.3 degrees, and 45 per cent of the basin sits in the gentle band between 2'000 and 2'100 metres. The aerial shows what that means on the ground: white limestone pavement threaded with real green meadow, the Silberen picture, and the meadows around the alp at 2'060 to 2'110 metres are grass.6
There is exactly one building inside the whole area, the Erigsmatt alp at 2'082 m: 71 square metres, two storeys, built in the early 1980s, one small dwelling fitted out in 1999, wood heat. The next buildings are 2.1 km east-south-east, over the cantonal border at Bergeten in Glarus. Marked paths cross the basin, the Braunwald to Charetalp to Erigsmatt to Glattalp line, so this is a walked place rather than a forgotten one.81
One correction to something the map suggests. The gazetteer files the Erigsmatt under "(GL, SZ) Muotathal, Glarus Süd", which reads as if the area straddles two cantons. It does not. About 3.2 km of its outline runs along the Schwyz to Glarus border, and the ground that actually falls in Glarus Süd adds up to 78 square metres of digitising slivers. The Erigsmatt is a Schwyz place, in the commune of Muotathal, all of it.1
One federal sentence, and it names tents
The decisive rule is not cantonal and not communal. It is federal, it is one sentence long, and it says the word.2
"Das freie Zelten und Campieren ist verboten. Vorbehalten bleibt die Benutzung offizieller Zeltplätze. Die Kantone können Ausnahmen bewilligen."Verordnung über die eidgenössischen Jagdbanngebiete (VEJ), SR 922.31, art. 5 para. 1 lit. e, consolidated version in force since 1 February 2025. In English: free tenting and camping is prohibited. The use of official campsites is reserved. The cantons may permit exceptions.
Read what the sentence does not say. It carries no zone qualifier, no size limit and no bivouac carve-out. That omission is deliberate, and you can prove it from the article itself: the neighbouring letter d, on carrying weapons, expressly makes room for "Gebiete mit partiellem Schutz", areas under partial protection. Letter e does not. The drafter knew how to write the exception and chose not to.2
It is moot at the Erigsmatt anyway. Reserve no. 9 is registered in two parts, and the federal inventory records the part covering this basin as a "Gebiet mit integralen Schutzbestimmungen", an area under integral protection, 6'178.5 hectares of it. The partial part exists, at 1'482.6 hectares, and its eastern edge lies more than three kilometres west of the named area.14
One more federal layer covers 93.5 per cent of the area, and it is worth naming so you can set it aside: BLN 1601 "Silberen", the inventory of landscapes of national importance. It binds authorities in their own decisions and creates no offence for a person sleeping out. It is the layer people find first, and it is not the one that decides this.5
And the last sentence is the one people misread. "Die Kantone können Ausnahmen bewilligen" gives the exception to the canton. Not to the alp, not to the Oberallmeindkorporation that owns the hut, not to the Älpler who is standing right there. Being told yes on the mountain does not make the tent lawful, because the person saying yes has nothing to give.2
The price is a fixed penalty, and it is small enough that people quote the wrong number instead. The fixed-penalty ordinance tariffs "Freies Zelten oder Campieren in eidgenössischen Jagdbanngebieten" at 150 francs, citing the hunting act together with the reserve ordinance. The 20'000 francs that circulates online is the ceiling of an ordinary criminal proceeding under the hunting act, which is a different road entirely.3
Below the federal level there is nothing to add, and that is worth stating precisely rather than vaguely. Canton Schwyz prohibits camping in six annexed plant reserves and prices it for nine named cantonal reserves; not one of the fifteen is in Muotathal. The commune publishes 38 regulations and has no police regulation, no fixed-penalty regulation and no camping regulation at all, and its building regulation scores zero on every camping term. What Muotathal has done instead is draw the federal reserve into its own binding zone plan as an overlay, so the communal map and the federal inventory say the same thing.7
Where the reserve ends, and why that does not help
On most reserve articles this is the useful section: the ban stops at a line, the line is walkable, and the article tells you where. Here the honest answer is that the line is either a cliff or a long way off.6
East is the shortest way out and it is not a way out. From the label point the reserve edge is 1'228 metres away on bearing 111, east-south-east, and the ground at the crossing runs at 33 degrees. Swing the bearing a little either way and it gets worse fast: between east-north-east and south-east the crossings sit at 43 to 78 degrees. That is the Legerwand, the wall that drops towards Braunwald. You leave the reserve there by falling out of it.6
West and south-west there is no edge at all. On bearings 240, 255 and 270 you are still inside the reserve after six kilometres. South-south-east to south-west it is 2.2 to 4.3 km. North-west is the only walkable exit, 1.3 to 1.4 km over the Grissetenchranz, and from the alp hut itself the nearest edge is 935 metres on bearing 326.6
What is on the far side of that north-west edge is the part worth knowing. The elevation model does show flat ground out there, at 1.9 degrees at 2'242 metres and 0.3 degrees at 2'202 metres. The aerial shows what those numbers actually are: bare, fissured Karren pavement with open black clefts. It is limestone you cannot lie on, and the green pasture visible beyond it runs at 25 to 45 degrees. So no pitch is published beyond the boundary here. The flat ground the map promises outside the reserve is rock, and the grass is the part that is banned.6
One more piece of ground deserves naming, because a slope scan hands it to you first and it is a trap. The flattest cells in the entire basin, 0.1 to 0.3 degrees at around 2'015 metres, are the Lauchboden in the Euloch below Schön Büel. Swisstopo marks it as marsh. It is wet ground, it is not a pitch, and it is inside the reserve like everything else.6
What is actually possible here
There is one door, and it is not the one people try. Only the canton can permit an exception, so the address is the cantonal office and not the alp.9
Amt für Wald und Natur, Jagd und Wildtiere
Bahnhofstrasse 9, Postfach 1184, 6431 Schwyz
041 819 18 44 · jagd@sz.ch
This is the office that holds the exception power under the reserve ordinance. Be realistic about what you are asking for: the permissions this route is built for are organised events and camps, and nothing suggests a solo tent for one night is the kind of request it exists to grant. Expect a no, and expect it to take longer than a weekend.
The alp cannot help you, and the alp is also the practical reason to stay away. The hut belongs to the Oberallmeindkorporation Schwyz, which carries "Erigsmatt, Muotathal" in the alp-buildings section of its own annual accounts alongside Charetalp, Glattalp and Silbern. The Älpler family, Yvonne and Alexander Ulrich, have been summering the basin for decades. The regional press reports the flock at around 1'100 to 1'200 sheep with goats and three working dogs, for about ten weeks each summer, and a much smaller number in 2025 after a foot-rot quarantine. Those are word-of-mouth figures from newspaper reporting rather than a published register, so take them as the order of magnitude. A tent pitched near that hut is a livestock problem before it is a legal one.8
Where the night actually happens: the Glattalphütte, 1'896 m, on the Glattalp, run by the SAC section Mythen. It is 6.3 km south-west of the Erigsmatt label point, and it is the same trip: Postauto to Muotathal, the valley bus into the Bisistal to Sahli, then the Glattalpbahn. From the top station the hut is ten minutes; from the valley on foot it is about two hours and 750 metres of ascent. Hüttenwartin Franziska Gwerder, +41 41 830 19 39.9
If you want the Erigsmatt itself, walk it in daylight. From the Glattalpbahn top station the regional paper gives it as a good two to two and a half hours, close to eight kilometres, and the Braunwald to Glattalp crossing takes it in as a T2 day of about 12 km. That is the version of this basin that is yours to have.9
General rules for wild camping
They apply everywhere, and on a mountain where the answer is no they matter for a different reason: the reserve exists because the animals in it need their nights undisturbed, and the object sheet names disturbance as the thing being kept out.
- 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
Everything here is a journalistic assessment as of September 2026, from the sources linked below, and it is not legal advice.
Illegal is the verdict for the named area as a whole. The reserve covers 99.5 per cent of it by exact intersection, including every piece of ground worth pitching on, and the remaining half per cent is boundary rock. Treat the whole basin as inside.
The fine of CHF 150 is the federal fixed-penalty tariff and is what a warden writes on the spot. A case can leave that track and go to ordinary proceedings under the hunting act, which is where the much larger figures live, but that is not the ordinary outcome for one tent.
The figures for the flock are from regional newspaper reporting between 2018 and 2025, not from a register, and the tenancy terms of the alp are not public. The office contact is taken from the cantonal department's own letterhead.
Frequently asked questions
Is wild camping allowed on the Erigsmatt?
What does it cost if a warden finds you?
Does a bivvy bag without a tent get around it?
Can the alp or the landowner give me permission?
How far do I have to walk to get out of the reserve?
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
- Official federal geodata and the national height model, queried 9 September 2026 for the swissNAMES3D area feature "Erigsmatt", a 443 vertex polygon of 7.5868 km2, LV95 bounding box 2'712'578.5 to 2'716'352.7 east and 1'198'913.3 to 1'202'896.3 north, label point 2'714'531 / 1'200'809 at 2'076.3 m. Exact polygon intersection rather than a grid estimate: 7.5479 km2 inside federal game reserve no. 9 "Silbern-Jägern-Bödmerenwald" = 99.5 per cent, 0.0389 km2 outside in eight boundary pieces; 7.0939 km2 = 93.5 per cent inside BLN 1601 "Silberen"; 7.5867 km2 in Muotathal SZ against 78 m2 in Glarus Süd, current-year swissBOUNDARIES3D records only, with about 3'245 m of the outline running along the cantonal border itself. The reserve feature returned at the pin is the integral polygon, "Gebiet mit integralen Schutzbestimmungen", 6'178.5 ha; the partial polygon of 1'482.6 ha has its eastern edge at 2'709'289, more than 3 km west. Wildlife rest zones, national parks, floodplains, fens, raised bogs, mire landscapes, amphibian sites, dry meadows, bird reserves, Ramsar, Emerald, forest reserves and livestock-guardian-dog pastures all return empty at six probe points. An invalid layer name returns HTTP 400 rather than an empty list at every one of those points, and the positive control at 2'626'000 / 1'154'500 returns game reserve no. 3 Kiental, so the empty answers are answers. map.geo.admin.ch. ↩
- Verordnung über die eidgenössischen Jagdbanngebiete (VEJ), SR 922.31, art. 5 para. 1 lit. e, read on 9 September 2026 from the consolidated version in force since 1 February 2025: "Das freie Zelten und Campieren ist verboten. Vorbehalten bleibt die Benutzung offizieller Zeltplätze. Die Kantone können Ausnahmen bewilligen." The neighbouring lit. d, on weapons, expressly provides that "Die Kantone können für Personen, die innerhalb des Banngebiets wohnen und für Gebiete mit partiellem Schutz, Ausnahmen gestatten", which is the proof that the absence of any zone qualifier in lit. e is deliberate. fedlex.admin.ch. ↩
- Ordnungsbussenverordnung (OBV), SR 314.11, Anhang 2 Ziff. 12005, read on 9 September 2026 from the consolidated version in force since 1 August 2026: "Freies Zelten oder Campieren in eidgenössischen Jagdbanngebieten (Art. 18 Abs. 1 Bst. e und Abs. 3 JSG, Art. 5 Abs. 1 Bst. e VEJ)", tariffed at 150 francs. Ziff. 12004 prices ignoring the leash requirement in a federal game reserve at the same 150. The CHF 20'000 figure that circulates is the ceiling of art. 18 para. 1 of the hunting act, SR 922.0, in ordinary proceedings, and is not the tariff a camper faces. fedlex.admin.ch. ↩
- Federal Office for the Environment, object sheet for federal game reserve no. 9 "Silbern-Jägern-Bödmerenwald", canton Schwyz, 2023 revision, read in full. Area description: "Das Schutzgebiet liegt in der grössten Karstlandschaft der Schweiz zwischen Jegerstöck und Pragelpass. Es umfasst im Nordwestteil den Bödmerenwald, eines der wenigen Urwaldreservate der Schweiz. Der Rest des Gebietes besteht aus weiten, steinigen Karstfeldern und Felshalden, die jedoch eine erstaunliche Vielfalt an Lebensräumen aufweisen." Objectives include "Schutz der wildlebenden Tiere vor Störung". Special measures, German text, exactly two: "Das Banngebiet umfasst einen integralen (I) und einen partiellen (II) Teil" and a prohibition on off-piste variant skiing outside marked routes. The sheet carries no camping clause of its own, so the prohibition comes from the ordinance and nowhere else. Objektblatt Nr. 9 (PDF). ↩
- Bundesinventar der Landschaften und Naturdenkmäler von nationaler Bedeutung, object 1601 "Silberen", returned at the label point and across 93.5 per cent of the named area. A BLN listing binds authorities in their own decisions under the federal nature and heritage protection act; it does not itself create an offence for a person sleeping out, and it is recorded here because it is the layer people find first. map.geo.admin.ch. ↩
- Reserve-boundary and terrain scan, 9 September 2026. Slope from the national elevation model on a 25 m grid, 12'134 samples inside the named polygon: altitude 1'828 to 2'600 m, median 2'109 m, median slope 15.9 degrees, 9.3 per cent of the area under 5 degrees = 72.0 ha, 16.7 per cent under 7 degrees, 28.2 per cent under 10 degrees, and 45.2 per cent of the area in the 2'000 to 2'100 m band at a median of 11.2 degrees. Of the flat ground more than 300 m from the alp hut, 64.1 ha, 99.9 per cent is inside the reserve. Distance to the reserve edge from the label point on 24 bearings: nearest 1'228 m on bearing 111 at 2'069.7 m with 33 degrees of slope; 1'273 to 1'464 m between bearings 75 and 135, at 43 to 78 degrees, which is the Legerwand above Braunwald; 1'322 to 1'702 m to the north-west; still inside at 6 km on bearings 240, 255 and 270. From the alp hut the nearest edge is 935 m on bearing 326. Beyond the north-west edge the model gives 1.9 degrees at 2'242 m and 0.3 degrees at 2'202 m, and the orthophoto shows both as bare fissured Karren pavement with open clefts, with the surrounding pasture at 25 to 45 degrees, so no pitch is published outside the boundary. The flattest cells in the basin, 0.1 to 0.3 degrees around 2'015 m, are the Lauchboden, which swisstopo marks as marsh and which lies in no federal mire inventory. map.geo.admin.ch. ↩
- Cantonal and communal level, both silent, and both recorded because they are the checks people run. Canton Schwyz prohibits camping only in the six plant reserves annexed to the Landschaftsschutzgesetz, SRSZ 721.110 § 9a Abs. 3, "Das Campieren ist untersagt" (Rossberg, Rigigebiet, Zindlenspitz, Mythengebiet, Hoch-Ybrig, Köpfengebiet), and prices camping only for the nine cantonal reserve ordinances listed in the fixed-penalty catalogue SRSZ 233.210, Anhang Ziff. 3.1, at CHF 150. None of the fifteen is in Muotathal. The cantonal act on public campsites, SRSZ 543.110 of 10 December 1959, licenses campsite operators and prohibits nothing for an individual. The commune of Muotathal publishes 38 documents and has no Polizeireglement, no Ordnungsbussenreglement and no camping regulation; its Baureglement, adopted 25 November 2012 and approved 2 July 2013, scores zero on Zelt, Campier, Camping and Biwak against live controls, and its two prohibition clauses cover fertilising, drainage, digging, terrain changes, extraction and building works. The communal zone plan carries the federal reserve as a binding overlay, "Jagdbanngebiet - Silberen - Jägeren - Bödmerenwald", alongside a Landschaftsschutzzone that restricts building and terrain only. The cantonal cadastre extract for the parcel, obtained 10 September 2026, closes the same question from the other side: parcel 386 runs to 72.36 km2 and carries 17 restrictions with a geometry audit of 219 surfaces and no unparsed point or line objects, and the only one covering the Erigsmatt at the label point, the alp hut, the flattest ground or the north-west edge is the base zoning, "Übriges Gemeindegebiet, unproduktiv". The parcel does carry a regional and a local nature-protection zone, seven groundwater protection zones and three forest reserves, and not one of them reaches this basin. The cantonal gazette volumes for 2024 and 2025 carry 90 judicial prohibitions in the canton, two of them in Muotathal, and both are about parking. Systematische Gesetzsammlung SZ, muotathal.ch. ↩
- The alp itself. Federal building and dwelling register, EGID 190199368, address "Erigsmatt", 6436 Bisisthal, commune Muotathal, parcel 386: category "building with partial residential use", footprint 71 m2, two storeys, construction period 1981 to 1985, one dwelling of 30 m2 and three rooms fitted out in 1999, wood heating and wood-fired hot water, status existing. It is an Alphütte, not a public shelter and not a serviced hut. The Oberallmeindkorporation Schwyz carries "Erigsmatt, Muotathal" in the alp-buildings schedule of its 2024 annual report, next to Charetalp, Glattalp, Silbern and Ober Saum; the corporation is at Brüöl 2, 6431 Schwyz, 041 818 50 60. Its statutes contain no camping provision. Flock figures are regional press, published here as word of mouth rather than as a register: Bote der Urschweiz, 2 August 2024, reports the Ulrich family with about 1'100 sheep, six goats and three dogs on the highest sheep alp in Schwyz; Schweizer Bauer, 21 July 2018, gives about 1'100 sheep for ten weeks; Bote der Urschweiz, 24 July 2025, reports roughly 200 that season after a foot-rot quarantine against a normal 1'100 to 1'200. Gebäude- und Wohnungsregister, oak-schwyz.ch. ↩
- The exception route and the roof. Amt für Wald und Natur, Jagd und Wildtiere, Bahnhofstrasse 9, Postfach 1184, 6431 Schwyz, 041 819 18 44, jagd@sz.ch, taken from the department's own letterhead on the cantonal hunting statistics for the 2025/2026 season. This is the authority the reserve ordinance means when it reserves exceptions to the cantons; note the number, 041 819 18 44, which is the office line rather than the wildlife-observation line. The canton's own information board for this reserve, published with the former Federal Office for Environment, Forests and Landscape, lists four rules of which the fourth is "Campieren verboten.", cites the VEJ of 30 September 1991 as its legal basis, reserves cantonal permits for sporting and social events, and names the Oberallmeindkorporation Schwyz as the owner of large parts of the area. Glattalphütte SAC, 1'896 m, LV95 2'709'409 / 1'197'197, so 6.27 km on bearing 235 from the Erigsmatt label point, owned by SAC Sektion Mythen, Hüttenwartin Franziska Gwerder, +41 41 830 19 39, season opening 6 June 2026. Access to both is the same: Postauto to Muotathal, the valley bus into the Bisistal to Sahli, then the Glattalpbahn cable car. Jagdstatistik SZ (PDF), information board (PDF), glattalphuette.ch. ↩