Wild camping on the Fisetenpass

Nothing prohibits it, and here is each level

Start with the federal layers, because that is where a night usually dies. Queried at the pass on 14 August 2026, at 2'713'920 / 1'193'750 in LV95 and 46.885102 N / 8.933354 E, on ground the national terrain model puts at 2'034.1 metres: no federal game reserve, no wildlife rest zone at the point, no BLN landscape, no floodplain, no raised bog, no fen, no mire landscape, no dry meadow, no amphibian site, no waterbird reserve, no forest reserve, no park of national importance. All empty.¹

An empty answer is only worth something if a wrong answer would have looked different, so two controls ran alongside. A deliberately invalid layer name returns HTTP 400 instead of an empty list, which is the trap: a client that only looks for results would read a typo as "not inside". And a positive control at a known game reserve in the Kiental returns that reserve. The queries work, and the emptiness is real.¹

Then the canton, where Uri is unusually quiet. Three acts could plausibly carry a camping ban and none of them does. The Polizeigesetz (RB 3.8111), the Polizeireglement (RB 3.8127) and the Gesetz über den Natur- und Heimatschutz (RB 10.5101, in force since 1988) were pulled in full from the cantonal law register and scanned on word boundaries for campieren, zelten, lagern, biwakieren, Camping and übernachten. Zero hits in all three. Not "no general ban with exceptions": the words are simply not in the texts, across roughly 428'000 characters of statute.²

There is a fine, and it is worth reading precisely because it gets quoted loosely. Uri's Reglement über die Erhebung von Ordnungsbussen (RB 3.9223) lists at Anhang 1, art. A1-1, no. 2.1 the offence "Lagern, Zelten oder Campieren in Schutzzonen" at 150 francs. But look at what it hangs on: art. 34 para. 1 lit. a of the Natur- und Heimatschutzgesetz "in Verbindung mit dem jeweiligen Reglement", in conjunction with the respective ordinance. And art. 34 para. 1 lit. a itself punishes only someone who contravenes a Schutzmassnahme, a protection measure.³

So the chain needs a protection measure at the spot where you are standing. Notably, the word Schutzzone does not appear even once in the whole Natur- und Heimatschutzgesetz: the fixed-penalty list is using its own shorthand for the measures the act does create. No measure, no offence, no 150 francs.³

And there is no measure here. Uri publishes its protection measures as queryable map layers and marks the legally effective ones with rkr, for rechtskräftig. Both were asked at the pin: the national and regional measures layer returns nothing, and the local measures layer returns nothing. So does the cantonal protection inventory. A deliberately invalid layer name in the same service returns a ServiceExceptionReport rather than an empty answer, so once again the zeroes are answers and not silence.⁴

One nuance on that inventory, because it is the thing most likely to be waved at you. The canton describes it in its own metadata as having "lediglich hinweisenden Charakter", merely indicative, not exhaustive, and binding only on authorities. An inventory entry is not a rule addressed to a person carrying a tent. The binding instrument is the protection measure, and that is the layer that came back empty.⁴

The commune is the last level. Spiringen's binding land-use plan puts the pass in an agricultural zone, a Landwirtschaftszone. That is a planning designation about what may be built and farmed, not a prohibition on sleeping outdoors, and it is the honest reason the alp matters more here than the law does.⁴

One gap, named rather than hidden

Normally this section would quote the official register of restrictions on landownership for the parcel, the OEREB extract, because that is the single document a Swiss authority will point to. For this parcel Uri's extract service does not answer.

The federal cadastre layer names Uri's service and gives the parcel identifier CH190779194677. The json, pdf and xml flavours were all requested, with waits up to five minutes, and every one of them held the connection open and returned nothing. This is not a wrong request: a deliberately invented parcel identifier returns HTTP 204 in about a second from the same host, and the url flavour returns HTTP 200. The service is alive and it simply will not produce this extract.⁷

So rather than describe a document nobody read, the analysis above used the canton's own underlying layers, the same data the extract is built from, queried point by point with a control. That is a fair substitute and it is not quite the same thing, so it is stated plainly here instead of buried. If you want the paper for your own peace of mind, the cantonal office listed in the source note is who to ask.⁷

The landowner has already said yes, in writing

This is the part that turns "not forbidden" into "actually fine". Korporation Uri is, in its own words, "die grösste Grundeigentümerin in Uri", the largest landowner in the canton. Its page also notes that about a third of the cantonal surface is used as alp pasture and that those alps belong for the most part to the corporations. On its own service page it writes, in plain German:⁵⁸

"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." There is no general wild-camping ban in Uri, so camping on Korporation land is allowed in principle and does not have to be registered.⁵

That is a standing, openly granted permission from the owner of the ground, not a favour you have to ask for. It is also not unconditional, and the conditions are short enough to just read: comply with the rules inside nature and landscape protection zones, spare the pasture, get the right permit for private roads, contact the herder if your spot is near a farming operation, tell the Korporation in advance if you are staying more than three nights or coming with more than ten people, pack your rubbish into charged bags and carry it to a collection point, and leave the site tidy. The Korporation also states it accepts no liability for anything the mountains do to you.⁵

On this pass, the herder clause is the live one. The Urnerboden is the largest alp in Switzerland and it is worked, not decorative. The nearest building sits 134 metres from the pass, with three more between 670 and 710 metres. That is close enough that "near a farming operation" is a fair description of where you are, so a word with whoever is up there is both the owner's condition and the obvious courtesy.¹⁵

The one thing that changes in winter

There is a wildlife rest zone next door and it deserves naming, because a rest zone is one of the few things up here that carries a real access ban. Wildruhezone Urnerboden, number 19.19.1, is recorded as rechtsverbindlich, legally binding, on the basis of a government decision of 2008. Its provision is coded R20: a prohibition on entry, on foot and for winter sports.⁶

Two facts make it irrelevant to a summer night at the pass, and both are worth having precisely. First, it is not here. Walking the query radius outwards in steps, the zone first appears between 525 and 550 metres from the pin. The pass is outside it. Second, it is seasonal. The protection period runs 1 December to 30 April, so for the months anyone would carry a tent over this pass the entry ban is not in force at all.⁶

The practical version: in summer, sleep at the pass and wander where the trails go. Between December and April, do not drift north-east off the pass, and remember that on skis the ban is aimed squarely at you.⁶

The ground, and where it is actually flat

The pass is a saddle and it behaves like one. At the pin the terrain model gives 7.6 degrees, which is sleepable at a pinch but not comfortable, and the ground within 100 metres runs from 1'974.8 m to 2'049.4 m around a mean of 2'021.2 m. You are on a crossing, not a terrace.¹

A masked scan of the surrounding 700 metres, stepping every 70 metres and discarding anything inside a water polygon, found nine spots at or under 7 degrees. The two worth knowing: 2.5 degrees at 1'948.6 m, 280 metres west, and 0.8 degrees at 1'974.6 m, 560 metres south, which is as flat as this basin gets. No standing water inside 900 metres of the pass, so there is no lake shore to complicate the picture.¹

What would change the answer: a new protection measure entered in the cantonal layers, a change to Spiringen's land-use plan, or the Korporation withdrawing or narrowing its published permission. All three are things the canton and the owner publish, and all three are checkable at the links below before you go.

General rules for wild camping

You are above the tree line on a worked alp, on ground whose owner has said yes in advance. That combination asks for a fairly high standard of behaviour, and the owner has written most of it down already:

• 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 August 2026, from the sources linked below, and it is not legal advice.

Two things could move: Uri's protection measures and Spiringen's land-use plan are both revisable, and Korporation Uri's published permission is a landowner's decision that a landowner can change. Check the two links before a trip rather than trusting a page you read once.

Uri's official register of landownership restrictions did not answer for this parcel, which is stated in full above. The analysis rests on the canton's own in-force layers instead.

Frequently asked questions

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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