Wild camping at the Grosssee: no, and half of it is a rule
The Grosssee looks like the picture people have in mind when they ask this question: an alp lake with mountains behind it. Standing there it is a different place. A chairlift stops 138 metres away, a mountain hotel is on the bank, and the shoreline runs in and out of a nature reserve whose ordinance names tents.
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.
Before the law: what is actually standing around this lake
The honest first answer to "can I camp at the Grosssee" is not a legal one. It is that you would be camping in a small resort.
- The Seeben chairlift ends 138 m from the water.
- The Berghotel Seebenalp is on the bank, and the federal register of buildings lists ten registered buildings between 138 and 262 m of the lake, one of them a house.
- A marked hiking path passes 64 m away, one of forty path segments inside a kilometre and a half.
- The ski piste zone in the communal plan starts 91 m from the water.
- The lake sits at 1'619 m, on grazed alp in the middle of a ski area, with the Schwarzsee 193 m east and the Heusee 277 m west.
None of that is a prohibition. All of it is the reason the answer is no even where no prohibition applies: this is somebody's working alp and somebody's terrace view, and a tent on the bank is visible from both.15
Half the shore is inside a reserve, and the ordinance names tents
The legal picture here is unusual, so it is worth being precise rather than sweeping.
Federal law does nothing at this lake. Identify returns no game reserve, no wildlife rest zone at federal level, no BLN landscape, no bog, no floodplain, no dry meadow, no park and no forest reserve, with an invalid-layer control that errors rather than answering empty. Canton St. Gallen has no camping norm at all: its summary-offences act, which is where a cantonal fixed penalty would live, contains no camping term, and its police act mentions overnight guests only in the hotel registration article.34
Quarten has no police regulation either. Its 38 published acts include none, and the only camping line in the Baureglement is art. 11, which dedicates one intensive-recreation zone to camping and caravan facilities. Everything that binds you here is in one document instead: the Schutzverordnung of 1 March 2021.6
Art. 5: the reserve, and what it says
Art. 5 para. 1 lists what is forbidden in the commune's nature reserves, and two of the entries are ours:
"die Nutzung zu Erholungs- und Freizeitzwecken wie Lager, Zelten, Campieren usw. und das Anfachen von Feuer, ausser an den bezeichneten Stellen"Schutzverordnung der Politischen Gemeinde Quarten of 1 March 2021, art. 5 para. 1. The same paragraph also forbids leaving the marked paths, except at designated places and, in snow conditions in the mountains, outside the wildlife rest zones.
So the question is where that reserve runs, and the answer is: through the lake's bank. The nearest edge of a "Naturschutzgebiet feucht A (unbeweidet)" is 55 m from the centre of the lake, which is inside the water. Tested vertex by vertex against the official cadastre, 30 of the 63 points that make up this shoreline lie inside it. Another 11 fall in the communal Grünzone Naturschutz, 12 in the ski-piste zone, and 23 in none of them.5
Why the other 23 are not a loophole
Three reasons, and they are all in the same ordinance.
First, art. 4 para. 2: in the immediate surroundings of a protected object, all measures and activities that impair it are prohibited. A tent pitched twenty metres outside the polygon, on the same bank, is exactly what that clause is written for.2
Second, the neighbours. A Lebensraum-Schongebiet begins 64 m from the water, and art. 15 bans in it "alle Tätigkeiten, welche eine Beeinträchtigung der Kerngebiete bewirken". A Wildruhezone begins at the same 64 m, and art. 18 closes it to entry entirely from 15 December to the end of the ski season, which in a ski area is a long window.25
Third, the sanction is real and it is not limited to intent. Art. 24 refers breaches to the federal Nature and Cultural Heritage Act and the cantonal Planungs- und Baugesetz, and says expressly that a negligent breach counts as a breach. Nobody has to prove you knew where the line ran.2
What to do instead
Sleep on the alp legally. The Berghotel Seebenalp is on the bank and has been since 1907, and the whole point of a mountain inn is that it is the sanctioned version of what you were going to do anyway. It is also the shortest possible walk from your evening swim.
Or come for the day and go higher for the night. The three Seeben lakes are a good afternoon: the Grosssee for the swim, the Schwarzsee 193 m east, the Heusee 277 m west. Then take the ridge south and get properly above the infrastructure before you stop. What you are looking for is ground that is out of a reserve, out of the piste zone, well away from buildings and high enough to be nobody's pasture, and this is a massif that has it: the terrain south and west of the Spitzmeilen carries exactly that kind of open, high, unserviced country.
If you want a night at a lake in this commune specifically, be aware that Quarten's other well-known lake group, the Murgseen, sits under the same ordinance and is a different answer again, with its own reserve polygons and a winter access ban. Read that one before assuming the two are interchangeable.
If you are already up there and it is dark
The lake is 64 m from a marked path and the hotel is on the bank, so the realistic emergency answer is to knock. That is not a legal loophole, it is what mountain inns are for.
General rules for wild camping
Wherever you end up instead, the alp around this lake is worked ground and the reserve boundary is invisible on the ground:
- 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.
Not allowed is the honest summary rather than a single citable ban. About half the shoreline is inside a nature reserve where art. 5 of the communal protection ordinance names tents and forbids them; the rest of the bank is caught, if at all, by the general clause of art. 4 para. 2, which is a judgement call rather than a line on a map.
The shoreline test used the openly published lake outline and the official cadastre polygons. It locates the boundary within a few metres, which is enough to say that the reserve covers about half the bank and not enough to plan a pitch to the metre.
Frequently asked questions
Is wild camping allowed at the Grosssee on the Seebenalp?
Is there a fine?
What about the half of the shore that is outside the reserve?
Can I sleep at the Schwarzsee or the Heusee instead?
Where is the nearest legal bed?
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
- Terrain and surroundings, queried 3 September 2026 through the federal geoportal at LV95 2'737'299.9 / 1'215'817.9, terrain surface 1'619.0 m, commune Quarten at the point from the current-year municipal boundary layer. Named features and their distances from the lake centre: Grosssee 63 m, Sesselbahn Seeben 138 m, Seebenalp 161 m, Schwarzsee 193 m, Heusee 277 m. The federal register of buildings and dwellings returns ten registered buildings between 138 m and 262 m, addressed Seebenalp, Oberterzen, including the Berghotel and one residential building at 234 m. The nearest marked hiking path segment is 64 m away, one of forty within 1'500 m. The elevation model reads 0.0 degrees at the pin, which is the lake surface rather than ground, so the shoreline was taken from the openly published lake outline instead: 63 vertices between 57 m and 192 m from the centre. geo.admin.ch. ↩
- Schutzverordnung der Politischen Gemeinde Quarten of 1 March 2021, provisions and annexes, as linked from the cantonal cadastre of public-law restrictions. Art. 4 para. 2: "In der unmittelbaren Umgebung der von dieser Verordnung erfassten Schutzgegenstände sind alle Massnahmen und Aktivitäten, welche die Schutzgegenstände beeinträchtigen, untersagt." Art. 5 para. 1 (Naturschutzgebiete) prohibits, among other things, "die Nutzung zu Erholungs- und Freizeitzwecken wie Lager, Zelten, Campieren usw. und das Anfachen von Feuer, ausser an den bezeichneten Stellen" and "das Verlassen der markierten Wege, ausser an bezeichneten Stellen und bei Schneelage im Berggebiet ausserhalb der Wildruhezonen". Art. 15 (Lebensraum-Schongebiete) prohibits road building, extraction and deposits and "alle Tätigkeiten, welche eine Beeinträchtigung der Kerngebiete bewirken". Art. 18 (Wildruhezonen): "In den Wildruhezonen sind alle Wintersportaktivitäten sowie das Betreten und Befahren während der Zeit vom 15. Dezember bis Ende Skisaison untersagt." Art. 24: breaches are sanctioned under the federal Nature and Cultural Heritage Act and the cantonal Planungs- und Baugesetz, "sowohl der vorsätzlich als auch der fahrlässig herbeigeführte Verstoss". oereblex.sg.ch. ↩
- Official federal geodata, queried 3 September 2026 at the lake. Identify returns empty results for federal game reserves, wildlife rest zones, the BLN landscape inventory, raised bogs, fens, mire landscapes, floodplains, amphibian spawning sites, Ramsar sites, Emerald sites, parks of national importance and forest reserves. Every query ran alongside a deliberately invalid layer id, which returns HTTP 400 while all real layers return HTTP 200, and a positive control point inside federal game reserve no. 3 Kiental correctly returns that polygon, so the empty results are genuine negatives rather than a mistyped layer name. map.geo.admin.ch. ↩
- Cantonal law of St. Gallen, read in full on 3 September 2026 through the official register's JSON interface, text lowercased before scanning and control terms confirmed in each act. Übertretungsstrafgesetz sGS 921.1: no camping term at all, so no cantonal fixed penalty exists. Polizeigesetz sGS 451.1: the only occurrences of "übernacht" are in art. 52bis, the hotel registration form. Naturschutzverordnung sGS 671.1, Jagdgesetz sGS 853.1 and the forest acts sGS 651.1 and 651.11: silent. Planungs- und Baugesetz sGS 731.1 mentions camping only as a zoning category and in the list of structures exempt from a building permit. gesetzessammlung.sg.ch. ↩
- Cadastre of public-law restrictions on landownership (ÖREB) for canton St. Gallen, extract with geometry taken 3 September 2026 for EGRID CH478877770764, parcel 60 in Quarten, land register area 7'873'831 m², 181 restrictions. Geometry audit: 171 Surface, 4 Line, 6 Point, so every area restriction was tested. Covering the pin, which is on the water: "Hinweis Gewaesser" and "Potenzieller Gewässerraum nach Übergangsrecht". Ring distances from the pin: Naturschutzgebiet feucht A (unbeweidet) 55 m, BauG Grünzone Naturschutz ausserhalb Baugebiet 61 m, Landwirtschaftszone 61 m, Lebensraum Schongebiet LR S 64 m, Wildruhezone mit Vorschriften im Winter WiW 64 m, Skiabfahrts- und Skiübungsgelände 91 m, Hinweis Wald 304 m. The 63 published shoreline vertices were each tested point-in-polygon against these zones: 30 lie inside a Naturschutzgebiet feucht A, 11 inside the Grünzone Naturschutz, 12 inside the ski-piste zone (with overlaps between the three), and 23 inside none of them. oereb.geo.sg.ch. ↩
- Communal acts of Quarten, complete collection on the cantonal publication platform, 38 acts downloaded and read on 3 September 2026 with per-file control counts recorded, several of them optically recognised because they are published as scans. There is no Polizeireglement in the collection. The Baureglement mentions camping once as zoning, in art. 11, which dedicates Intensiverholungszone C to camping and caravan facilities; the Kurtaxenreglement taxes campsite pitches; the Parkplatzreglement mentions a campsite car park. The protection ordinance is not part of this collection and was taken from the cadastre's legal-provision link. publikationen.sg.ch. ↩