Wild camping at the Lac de Moiry: the pin is on a reservoir

First, which Moiry, because there are five

This name is unusually crowded. Ask swisstopo and you get a commune called Moiry in the canton of Vaud, a locality of the same name there, the lake in Valais, a Gebiet Moiry spanning Evolène and Anniviers, and Le Glacier de Moiry at the head of the valley.¹

This article is about the Lac de Moiry, commune of Anniviers, canton Valais, at 2'247.9 metres, because that is the one people photograph and the one requests mean. If you were asking about the Vaud commune, that is a village and I would have declined it; if you meant the glacier, nothing here applies to walking on ice.

One administrative note. The commune layer returns Grimentz for older years and Anniviers for the current one, Grimentz having merged into Anniviers. The planning documents still carry the Grimentz name, which is correct: they are the acts in force, adopted under the old commune and never renamed.¹³

Valais, read from scratch, has no camping rule

This is the first Valais spot in this series, so rather than assume anything I read the canton itself. Four acts, scanned for the words that would matter, with control terms counted alongside so a silent parsing failure could not pass as a clean answer.⁴

• The planning application act, the cantonal implementation of the federal spatial planning law: zero for camping, tent, bivouac and caravan.
• The nature, landscape and sites protection act: zero for all four, while "interdit", "amende" and "autorisation" all appear, so the text was genuinely read.
• The hunting and wildlife act: zero for all four, controls again firing.
• The tourism act: exactly one hit for "camping", and it is in the article capping the lodging tax at one franc per night, which halves it "pour les exploitants de camping". That is a tax rule addressed to campsite operators.

So there is no cantonal prohibition on a single night in a tent in Valais. That is a negative finding rather than a permission, and it is the same shape of answer I found in Schwyz and Vaud.

The commune mentions tents once, and it is a permit rule

Anniviers has not written a camping ban either. The Grimentz building and zoning regulation touches tents exactly once, in the list of things that need a planning application, and what it says is procedural.³

"Pour l'installation de roulottes, wagons, caravanes, baraques volantes, tentes, à l'extérieur des places de camping, sont applicables les dispositions du règlement d'exécution du 1er juin 1977 de la Loi du 26 mars 1976 sur les établissements publics ... En règle générale, lorsque leur durée d'implantation dépasse 60 jours, la mise à l'enquête est obligatoire."Règlement communal des constructions et des zones, Grimentz.

Two things follow. First, the threshold that triggers a planning application is sixty days, and one night is not close to it. Second, the rule does not prohibit anything by itself: it points at another act.

And that other act no longer exists. The law of 26 March 1976 on public establishments was replaced by the cantonal act on lodging, catering and the retail of alcoholic drinks of 8 April 2004, in force since 1 January 2005. Its scope article is the interesting part: the law applies to any offer à titre commercial, made commercially, of lodging or of "emplacements de camping". A walker pitching their own tent for one night is making no commercial offer at all, so the successor act does not reach them either. Its fine of up to 50'000 francs is aimed at people running an unlicensed business.⁵

This is worth flagging because following the regulation's pointer literally sends you to research a repealed statute, which is the same trap the St. Gallen ordinances set with their reference to a superseded building act.

The coordinate everybody shares is water

Here is what actually decides Moiry, and it has nothing to do with the statute book.

Point-in-polygon at the shared coordinate returns two things: noise sensitivity level III, and "Zone d'équipement public, Barrage de Moiry". A public equipment zone is where a commune puts its infrastructure, and the regulation is explicit about what this one contains: "Sont inclus dans cette zone le lac et le Barrage de Moiry." The lake and the dam are the zone.²³

The terrain model agrees. Masking by the federal watercourse polygons rather than by elevation, the point itself comes back wet, and 1'775 of 5'041 samples in the surrounding box, thirty-five per cent, are water. Anyone quoting a slope figure for "Moiry" without masking the reservoir is describing the middle of a lake.⁶

So the verdict for the pin is simple. It is a hydroelectric reservoir held by a dam, inside the zone the commune drew around exactly that. You cannot camp there, and no ordinance had to say so.

What that leaves. Dry ground is steep here: only 99 of 3'266 dry samples come in under 7 degrees, three per cent. The nearest registered building to the pin is 443 metres away, with 18 inside 1'500 metres, which is the dam infrastructure and the road up.⁶⁷

Where to actually sleep, and one place to avoid

The pitch: 5.2 degrees at 2'525.1 metres, LV95 2'609'336 / 1'107'891. That is 1'105 metres from the lake coordinate and 473 metres from the nearest registered building, on dry ground well clear of the reservoir. Point-in-polygon puts it in the zone agricole d'alpage with no protection zone over it at all, and as set out above neither the canton nor the commune forbids a night there. Above the treeline, so the Swiss Alpine Club's guidance on a single discreet night applies in full.²⁶

A closer, flatter option, with its drawback stated. There is 4.2 degree ground at 2'390.0 metres about 695 metres from the pin, also in the alpine agricultural zone. It is flatter and much less walking, but it sits only 204 metres from a building, so you would be visibly camped next to somebody's alp. Your call, but you should have the number.⁶

And one to avoid. The flat ground higher up on the east side, around 2'611 metres, falls inside the zone de protection du paysage. That zone does not carry a camping clause either, but it is a protection designation and there is no reason to put a tent inside one when unprotected ground of the same quality is available a few hundred metres away.²

Working alp country, and a reservoir. Expect stock, fences and an access road with traffic to the dam. Leave gates as you found them, pitch late and strike early, keep well back from the water line, and remember that a reservoir level moves: ground that is dry in the evening is not automatically a good place to be. Carry everything out.

General rules for wild camping

Nothing in Valais or in Anniviers forbids you a night in a tent, which puts the whole weight on where you put it and how you leave it.

• 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 legal half of this assessment is a negative: no cantonal or communal instrument I found forbids a single night in a tent here, which is a scan result with control terms counted, not a permission anyone has granted. This is also the first Valais spot in this series, so the cantonal chain behind it is newly built rather than long-tested. The terrain half rests on the federal elevation model on a 25-metre grid with the reservoir masked by polygon; a reservoir's level changes and the mask reflects one survey, not the water line on the night you arrive. Before every tour, check the current sources yourself and follow the signs on site. A genuine emergency bivouac in distress is a separate question from a planned camp. 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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