Wild camping on the Gridone: the statute says yes, the border says where

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 rare case: a statute that says yes

Most reports in this file are built out of absences. This one is not. Ticino legislated on camping and wrote the mountain exception into the same article as the ban.

"Art. 2 cpv. 1 È possibile campeggiare unicamente nelle aree autorizzate destinate a campeggio. cpv. 2 Fa eccezione al principio di cui al cpv. 1 l'attendamento a scopo di bivacco in montagna."Legge sui campeggi del 26 gennaio 2004, canton Ticino. In English: camping is possible only in authorised camping areas; pitching a tent for the purpose of mountain bivouac is an exception to that principle.

Read the word "attendamento". It means pitching a tent. The exception is not a grudging tolerance of a bivvy bag: a tent is inside it. What separates the permitted thing from the prohibited thing is purpose and duration, bivacco rather than campeggio, one night on a mountain rather than a stay.¹

Art. 3 then defines the regulated activity as "la sosta e il pernottamento temporaneo al di fuori del proprio domicilio, utilizzando in particolare installazioni mobili quali tende, «roulottes», «motorhomes»", and art. 27 sets the sanction: a fine of 50 to 10'000 francs imposed by the Municipio. Those figures apply to the ban, not to the exception, and they are worth knowing because they mark what happens when a bivouac turns into a camp.¹

Neither commune takes the exception away

A cantonal exception is only worth what the commune leaves of it, and two communes meet on this summit. Both were checked properly.

Brissago: all 59 documents in its published legislation collection were downloaded and scanned, including the norme di attuazione del piano regolatore, the zoning ordinance, at 49'604 characters with healthy control counts. No camping provision anywhere. The apparent hits are a language trap worth naming: every occurrence of "tende" in that corpus is the Italian verb, in intende, pretendere and tendenti, and the one "pernottamento" is an expense rate for officials on duty.²

Centovalli: the Regolamento organico comunale, 41'939 characters with healthy controls, is silent, as is the table-and-boiler rental regulation, and the commune's published legislation page lists no camping or police act at all. One ordinance, on vehicle access to the village core of Intragna, is a scan that yields no readable text even after optical recognition; it is reported here as unread, and it concerns a hamlet some 1'800 metres below this summit.²

Federal law adds nothing here either. No game reserve, no wildlife rest zone, no landscape inventory object, no bog, no floodplain, no park, no forest reserve at the summit, with an invalid-layer control that errors rather than answering empty. The nearest object is the Emerald site Monte di Brissago, whose edge runs 3 m away without covering the point; the Palagnedra forest reserve is 1'008 m off.⁴

The border runs over the summit, and it decides where you sleep

Here is the detail that makes this summit different from every other legal verdict in this file. The federal gazetteer entry for the top carries no canton at all: it reads "Hauptgipfel Gridone Monte Limidario", with no cantonal suffix, while the area just north-west is "Rocce del Gridone (TI) - Centovalli".³

Query the Swiss municipal boundary layer at the summit and it returns nothing. That is not an error: the point falls in the sliver where the international border crosses the top, so no Swiss commune claims it. Cast rays outward on 24 bearings and the picture resolves:

• Swiss ground begins 25 m away on almost every bearing.
• Centovalli to the north and west, Brissago to the east and south.
• Only two bearings need more: 75 m and 300 m towards the west.

So the mountain is half Swiss, the ridge is Swiss on both flanks of the top, and a pitch here is a matter of walking 25 to 100 metres in a direction you have chosen deliberately rather than by eye.³

Which is why the flattest ground is not the answer

The terrain model finds a good shelf at 4.5 degrees, 2'136.7 m, 134 m south-south-east of the summit. Tested against the boundary layer, that point returns no Swiss commune. It is on the border strip or over it, and this article will not send anyone there.⁵

The pitch to use is 9.0 degrees at 2'103.3 m, about 90 m south-east, and it is verifiably in Brissago. Two more Swiss options sit further out: 6.5 degrees at 2'142.0 m, 465 m out and also Brissago, and 8.8 degrees at 1'915.9 m, 340 m east-north-east in Centovalli, which is 270 m lower and a different kind of night.⁵

For scale: the summit dome itself reads 12.1 degrees, which on this mountain is gentle, because the median slope over an 800 by 800 metre box is 42.4 degrees and the ground falls to 1'522 m inside that box. The top is the flat part. That is why the choice is between a handful of measured points rather than "somewhere along the ridge".⁵

How to do it here

Go south-east off the top, not south-south-east. That is the whole navigational instruction. The good Swiss shelf is 90 m away and 85 m below the summit, in Brissago; the flatter ground beyond it is not verifiably Swiss. If you are unsure on the ground, the safe rule is to drop towards Lago Maggiore, because that is Brissago, rather than along the crest.⁵

A marked path runs 1 m from the summit, so you will not be off-trail, and you will be visible to anyone else on the ridge. The nearest buildings are the Alpe Avaiscia at 1'358 m and the Rifugio Al Legn at 1'459 m, which is also the obvious fallback bed if the weather turns.⁴

Stay inside the exception

The Ticino allowance is for bivacco in montagna, and that phrase is doing the work. Keep the night inside what those words describe: up towards evening, one night, gone in the morning, one or two people, nothing left. Two nights in the same spot, a group, or a camp with chairs is campeggio, and campeggio outside an authorised area is what art. 2 para. 1 prohibits, with art. 27 behind it.¹

No fire. Nothing at this point forbids one, and the summit sits 3 m from an Emerald site boundary on a dry southern slope above Lago Maggiore. This is exactly the terrain where a fire ends an exception for everyone.⁴

And the other country

This report answers Swiss law. The Gridone is also Italian, and the Italian side has its own rules that are not covered here. That is not a hedge, it is the scope of the file: if your pitch is not verifiably on Swiss ground, the verdict above does not apply to it, which is the practical reason the article names coordinates and communes rather than "near the summit".

General rules for wild camping

You are on a border ridge with a statutory permission behind you, which is rarer than it sounds. The way to keep it is to be the kind of guest the exception was written for:

• 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.

Lawful here rests on an express statutory allowance, art. 2 para. 2 of the Ticino camping act, and not on an absence. That is the strongest basis this file publishes, and it is still conditional: the exception covers bivacco in montagna, and a stay that stops being a bivouac stops being covered.

This article answers Swiss law only. The summit lies on the international border and the Italian side is outside its scope. The published pitch was checked against the current-year Swiss municipal boundary layer and returns Brissago; the flatter ground 134 m south-south-east returns no Swiss commune and is deliberately not recommended.

One Centovalli ordinance, on vehicle access to the Intragna village core, is published as a scan that yields no readable text even after optical recognition, and is reported as unread rather than silent. By subject it concerns a village 1'800 m below this summit.

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.

Swiss Guide Wildcamping Checker Color Grading

Sources

1. Legge sui campeggi del 26 gennaio 2004, canton Ticino, in the version in force. Art. 2 "Principio": cpv. 1 "È possibile campeggiare unicamente nelle aree autorizzate destinate a campeggio"; cpv. 2 "Fa eccezione al principio di cui al cpv. 1 l'attendamento a scopo di bivacco in montagna". Art. 3 "Campeggiare; definizione": "Sono considerati «campeggiare» la sosta e il pernottamento temporaneo al di fuori del proprio domicilio, utilizzando in particolare installazioni mobili quali tende, «roulottes», «motorhomes»". Art. 27 "Multa": "Le infrazioni alla presente legge ed al suo regolamento sono punite dal Municipio con una multa da un minimo di fr. 50.-- ad un massimo di fr. 10'000.-- giusta le norme della legge organica comunale". m3.ti.ch. ↩
2. Communal legislation of Brissago and Centovalli, checked 4 September 2026. Brissago: all 59 documents linked from the commune's Legislazione comunale page were downloaded and scanned with per-file control counts, including the norme di attuazione del piano regolatore at 49'604 characters. No camping, attendamento, bivacco or roulotte provision appears anywhere. All apparent "tende" matches are the Italian verb, in intende, pretendere and tendenti, and the single "pernottamento" is a per-night expense rate for officials in the Regolamento comunale. Centovalli: the Regolamento organico comunale, 41'939 characters with healthy control counts, is silent, as is the regulation on the rental of tables and boilers; the commune's published legislation page lists a street-lighting financing regulation, a helicopter-flight ordinance, a cemetery regulation, an ordinance on access to the Intragna village core and a table-rental ordinance, none of which concerns camping. The Intragna access ordinance is published as a scan that returns no readable text even after optical recognition at 300 dpi, and is reported here as unread rather than silent. brissago.ch. ↩
3. Border and identity of the summit, queried 4 September 2026. The federal gazetteer returns "Hauptgipfel Gridone Monte Limidario" with no cantonal suffix at WGS84 46.12336 / 8.64794, and separately "Gebiet Rocce del Gridone (TI) - Centovalli". At LV95 2'693'474.2 / 1'108'704.8, terrain surface 2'187.8 m, the Swiss municipal boundary layer filtered to the current year returns no commune at all, the point falling where the international border crosses the summit. Ray casting outward on 24 bearings in 25 m steps finds Swiss ground at 25 m on eighteen of them, Centovalli to the north and west and Brissago to the east and south, with 50 m, 75 m and 300 m needed on three bearings towards the west and south. geo.admin.ch. ↩
4. Official federal geodata, queried 4 September 2026 at the summit. Identify returns empty results for federal game reserves, wildlife rest zones, the BLN landscape inventory, raised and lowland bogs, mire landscapes, floodplains, dry grasslands, amphibian sites, Ramsar sites, parks of national importance, biosphere reserves, world natural heritage and forest reserves. The nearest objects by ring distance are the Emerald site "Monte di Brissago", object 34, whose edge runs 3 m from the point without covering it, the forest reserve Palagnedra at 1'008 m and the dry meadow Pizzo Leone at 2'369 m. Every query ran alongside a deliberately invalid layer id returning HTTP 400 while real layers return HTTP 200, and a positive control point inside federal game reserve no. 3 Kiental correctly returns that polygon. Surroundings: a marked hiking path passes 1 m from the summit, the area names Centovalli, Val di Bordéi and Rocce del Gridone all within 1 m, and the nearest registered buildings are the Alpe Avaiscia at 1'358 m and the Rifugio Al Legn at 1'459 m. map.geo.admin.ch. ↩
5. Terrain, queried 4 September 2026 through the federal elevation profile service on the 2 metre terrain model, with each candidate then tested against the current-year Swiss municipal boundary layer. The summit reads 12.1 degrees at 2'187.8 m; a 25 metre grid over an 800 by 800 metre box returns elevations from 1'522.1 to 2'187.8 m with a median slope of 42.4 degrees. Candidates and their commune: 4.5 degrees at 2'136.7 m, 134 m from the summit on bearing 158, no Swiss commune; 6.5 degrees at 2'142.0 m, 465 m on bearing 144, Brissago; 6.7 degrees at 2'111.6 m, 351 m on bearing 266, no Swiss commune; 8.8 degrees at 1'915.9 m, 340 m on bearing 73, Centovalli; 9.0 degrees at 2'103.3 m, 90 m on bearing 146, Brissago; 10.5 degrees at 2'161.6 m, 202 m on bearing 277, no Swiss commune. The published pitch is the 9.0 degree point, chosen because it is the closest candidate that the boundary layer places unambiguously in Switzerland. geo.admin.ch. ↩