Wild camping at the Iffighore: the 1969 decree names this exact peak

The decree names your peak

Wild camping at the Iffighore is unusual to research, because for once there is no boundary question to settle. The peak sits inside the cantonal nature reserve Gelten-Iffigen, filed as "N 100 R 35" and placed under state protection by a decree of the Bernese cantonal government, RRB Nr. 3658 of 30 May 1969. That decree does not describe the reserve vaguely and leave you guessing. It names its inner zones.¹

"Es schliesst die besonders bezeichnete Zone des obern Rohberg und des Iffigenhorns sowie des Lauenensees als engere Naturschutzgebiete in sich."Ziff. 2, RRB 3658: the reserve includes the specially designated zone of the upper Rohberg and of the Iffigenhorn, and of the Lauenensee, as inner nature protection areas.

The Iffigenhorn is the Iffighore, and the Iffighore is where you were planning to sleep. Of everything in a 47 km² reserve, this is one of the three places the 1969 government picked out for the strictest treatment.

What is actually prohibited

Paragraph 3 is the scope rule, and it is short: the prohibitions in paragraph 4 apply to the whole area, while paragraphs 6 and 7 apply additionally in the inner zones Hohberg/Iffigenhorn and Lauenensee. So paragraph 4 reaches your pin twice over, once as ordinary reserve and once as inner zone.¹

"Untersagt sind: ... d) das Campieren, das Aufschlagen von Zelten oder andern Unterständen."Ziff. 4 lit. d, RRB 3658: prohibited are camping, and the pitching of tents or other shelters.

And because you are in the inner zone, paragraph 6 stacks on top: use is restricted to cattle grazing, every interference with plant life is prohibited, and lighting fires is banned outright, with a single exception for the 1 August national-day fire.¹

This article is going to be short on argument, because the text is not ambiguous and pretending otherwise would waste your time.

Why the bivouac argument does not work here

On most Swiss spots this is where an article gets interesting. A communal rule says "Zelt", a bivvy bag is not a tent, and whether one night under the stars is caught becomes a genuine question that nobody has litigated. We have published that gap honestly at plenty of spots.

It does not exist here, and the reason is four words in a 1969 typescript.

"das Aufschlagen von Zelten oder andern Unterständen"Ziff. 4 lit. d: the pitching of tents OR OTHER SHELTERS.

A tarp is another shelter. A bivvy sack pitched for the night is another shelter. Whoever drafted this was not thinking about ultralight gear in 1969, but they wrote the general category rather than the one object, and the general category is what survives. On top of that the same sentence bans das Campieren as its own separate act, independent of what you sleep under.

It is worth saying plainly that this is a better source than the one usually quoted for this reserve. The canton's visitor information also reads the ban as covering sleeping out without a tent, and our own earlier notes on the Iffigfälle leaned on that flyer. You do not need it. The decree gets there on its own wording, and a decree beats a flyer every time.

What it costs, and the part that cuts the other way

The 1969 decree ends with a sentence that has aged out of Swiss criminal law: "Widerhandlungen gegen diesen Beschluss werden mit Busse oder Haft bestraft." Detention is gone. The live penalty is in the cantonal nature protection act.²

"Mit Busse von 100 Franken bis 50 000 Franken wird bestraft, wer ... einem Verbot oder einer Massnahme zuwiderhandelt"Art. 57 Abs. 1, Naturschutzgesetz des Kantons Bern (BSG 426.11).

Above that, art. 57 para. 2 allows up to CHF 100'000 in severe cases, which is aimed at people who bulldoze a wetland, not at a tent. Prosecution prescribes after three years, absolutely after six.²

Now the part that cuts the other way, because leaving it out would be dishonest. Art. 57 para. 3 reads: "In besonders leichten Fällen kann von Strafe Umgang genommen werden." In particularly minor cases the authority can refrain from punishing at all.

One considerate person, one night, no fire, no trace, gone at dawn, is about as close to a particularly minor case as this reserve gets. So the realistic outcome if you are found is a conversation and an instruction to move, not a five-figure bill. But read what that clause actually is: a discretion the authority holds, not a permission you hold. It describes how you might be treated after you have already broken the rule. It is not a route, and this article is not going to dress it up as one.

The two exceptions, and why neither is yours

The decree does contain exceptions, and it would be sloppy to say "forbidden" without showing you them. There are two, and the useful thing is understanding exactly who each one is addressed to.¹

Designated places

"das Campieren sowie das Parkieren an besonders bezeichneten Plätzen, die vom Grundeigentümer mit Bewilligung der Gemeindebehörde und der Forstdirektion festgelegt sind"Ziff. 5 lit. c: camping and parking at specially designated places, fixed by the landowner with the permission of the communal authority and the forestry directorate.

This is a carve-out for places, not for people. Somewhere can be designated as a camping spot if the landowner, the commune and the cantonal forestry directorate all agree to designate it. Nothing has been designated on the Iffighore, and a three-way designation is not something a visitor triggers for one Saturday night.

Exceptions in justified cases

"Die Forstdirektion ist befugt, in begründeten Fällen weitere Ausnahmen von den Schutzbestimmungen zu bewilligen."Ziff. 8: the forestry directorate is empowered to permit further exceptions from the protection provisions in justified cases.

This one is real, but note the grammar: it empowers the authority, in justified cases. Compare a clause like Bregaglia's "su richiesta il municipio può concedere una deroga", on request the municipio may grant a derogation, which is addressed to the person asking and is why that spot comes out as "it depends" rather than a flat no. Paragraph 8 is not written that way. It is the machinery for research access, infrastructure, management work: a justified case, not a nice evening.

That difference is the whole verdict. Where a ban tells you how to ask, we say it depends. Where it does not, we say it is illegal, and this one does not.

What else is on this ground, and what is not

Bern runs a cadastre of public-law restrictions, so the answer for this exact point is authoritative rather than inferred. The parcel is EGRID CH858346223559, 3'492'149 m² of it, so I pulled the extract with geometry and tested the summit itself against every restriction in it.³

Covering the point:

• Gelten-Iffigen (NSG-Nr. 35), the reserve, matched against a 1'432-point boundary. This is the one that decides the article.
• A second NSG 35 zone carrying its own additional articles, a small polygon whose edge runs 55 m from the summit. This is the inner zone the decree names.
• Landschaftsschutzgebiet BLN-Gebiet Gelten-Iffigen in the communal land-use plan.
• Groundwater protection zone S3 (Blattibrunnen, no. 859), which is a reason to be careful with washing and waste even where nobody is watching.

Federally there is exactly one layer: BLN 1501 "Gälte – Iffigen", the landscape inventory. That binds federal and cantonal authorities in their planning decisions and carries no fine for a person with a rucksack, so it is context and not the rule. Everything else comes back empty at the point: no federal game reserve, no wildlife rest zone, no bog, no floodplain, no dry grassland, no park of national importance. The cantonal reserve is doing all the work here.⁴

Worth stating for anyone who assumes a canton-wide rule exists: Bern has no general camping prohibition. The nature protection ordinance BSG 426.111 contains no occurrence of Zelt, Campieren, Biwak or Übernachten at all. What binds you at the Iffighore is this one 1969 decree, which is precisely why the reserve boundary matters so much.²

The flat top is a trap, and where to sleep instead

A word about the ground, because the Iffighore has a specific way of tempting people. The summit cap really is flat: 1.5 degrees at 2'378.7 m, measured on the national elevation model. On a screen, and from the last hundred metres of the walk, it reads like a pitch.⁵

It is a crown, not a plateau. Every sample around it falls away hard: 23 to 24 degrees within 100 m in most directions, 59 degrees 250 m north, and 62 to 75 degrees to the north-west. So the flat bit is small, exposed on all sides, and sits on the one peak the decree singles out. Even with the law removed it would be a poor and windy decision.

The legal beds are close

• Wildhornhütte SAC, 1.9 km away. The obvious answer: it is the hut this whole area is walked from, and staying in it is the one form of overnighting the decree expressly preserves, since para. 5 lit. d reserves SAC accommodation.¹
• Berghaus Iffigenalp, 3.1 km, with rooms and a dormitory, at the road head.
• Lenk, 8.0 km down the valley, which has the campsites. If you specifically want to sleep in a tent in this valley, that is where it is lawful.

The Iffigsee, 783 m south of the summit and the thing most people actually mean when they ask about this area, is inside the same reserve and answered the same way. So is the Iffigfälle below it. There is no version of this walk where the tent comes out legally between Lenk and the Rawil.

If you want the Bernese Oberland with a tent rather than a hut, the honest advice is to pick a different valley: this one has been a state nature reserve since 1969, and it is one of the few places in Switzerland where the rule against sleeping out is both explicit and old.

General rules for wild camping

There is no lawful pitch inside this reserve, so these are the rules for being here in daylight: stay on the paths, no fire at all in the inner zone, leave the plants alone, and carry everything 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

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.

The 1969 decree is published as a scan of a typescript and its machine-readable text carries OCR damage; the passages quoted here were read against the page image and are reproduced in the original German so you can check them. Protection decrees are amended and reserve boundaries are redrawn, so check the current version before relying on any of this, and follow instructions on site. The terrain figures describe the ground and are not a safety assessment of your route. A genuine emergency bivouac in distress is a separate question from a planned camp, and nothing here is aimed at someone caught out by weather. 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.

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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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