Wild camping at Läger, Calfeisental

What the coordinate actually points at

A request with no place name is still a good request, and it is usually a sign that somebody has stopped asking about a whole valley and started asking about one spot. So the first job is to say where this is.

The point converts to WGS84 46.90848 / 9.40956 and sits at 1'425.9 m in the commune of Pfäfers, canton St. Gallen. It is on the south flank of the Tamina, at the mouth of the Calfeisental, with Vättis 2'337 m to the east and the Gigerwaldsee 2'549 m to the west. The national gazetteer offers three names for this ground: Läger, Säss, and the valley itself, Calfeisen.⁶

The commune question is settled here, which is not always the case on a slope like this. The nearest other communal territory is Tamins in Graubünden, 1'824 metres south. Everything below is Pfäfers law and only Pfäfers law.⁶

Now the ground, which is what the verdict turns on. The aerial imagery shows closed conifer forest, north facing and shaded. The height model, sampled on a 25 metre grid, gives 11.7 degrees at the pin itself and 16 to 26 degrees at the eight nodes around it. The pin is on a slight bench in a slope that is otherwise steep.⁶

• Nearest marked hiking trail: 423 metres. Nothing at all within 360 m. This is trackless forest, and that number is a real negative: the same query at Vättis returns eight trail segments, and an invalid layer name returns an error rather than a clean-looking zero.⁶
• A registered building sits 81 metres away. The federal building register lists an existing, non-residential building at Luterenzugstrasse 1282.1, 7315 Vättis. You would be pitching inside sight of somebody's working alp building.⁶
• 1'425.9 m is far below the local treeline. The forest here runs on for another 200 metres of altitude above the pin. The usual argument for a tolerated high bivouac does not reach down here.

That combination is what this journal calls a no before the law even opens. Steep, wooded, trackless ground next to somebody's building, well under the treeline, is not a place to plan a night out, however permissive the rulebook turns out to be. What follows is the rulebook anyway, because the answer it gives is genuinely surprising and because it decides where you should not go from here.

The zone you are in, and the zone 1.2 kilometres west

Start with the cadastre rather than with a search engine. The federal cadastre of public-law restrictions on landownership names, for a given point, which instruments actually bind it. The parcel here is number 215, and it is an alpine monster: 25.8 square kilometres carrying 291 restrictions. A list that long tells you nothing on its own, so every one of the 288 polygons was tested against the coordinate itself.²

Three of them contain the pin. That is all.

• Zoning: "BauG übriges Gemeindegebiet allg", that is, land outside the building zone.
• Noise sensitivity level III.
• Schutzverordnung of the commune of Pfäfers: "Lebensraum Schongebiet LR S".

The third one is the whole story. In the ordinance's own schedule, that zone is LRS 2, "Vorderes Calfeisental und Calfeisental", and it is governed by art. 19.³

"Die Lebensraum-Schongebiete gelten als Schutzgegenstände nach Art. 98 Abs. 1 lit. d des Baugesetzes. Sie sind als Lebensraum zu erhalten. Bestand und natürliche Weiterentwicklung der Tiere und Pflanzen dürfen nicht beeinträchtigt werden. Zudem sind in den Schongebieten alle Tätigkeiten untersagt, die eine Beeinträchtigung der Kerngebiete bewirken. Untersagt sind insbesondere: Bau oder Ausbau von Strassen [...]; Abbauvorhaben (Steine, Kies, Sand, Lehm, Torf), Schüttungen und Deponien."Schutzverordnung der Gemeinde Pfäfers, art. 19 para. 1.

Read the list. Roads and quarrying. There is no tent in it, no Zelten, no Campieren, no Lagern, and no ban on leaving the marked paths. The general duty not to impair the habitat is real and it is a reason to behave, but it is not a camping prohibition and it carries no camping sanction.

The same ordinance does ban tents, twice, in zones this pin is not in. That is the part worth getting right, because it is where every summary of the Calfeisental goes wrong.³

• Art. 8, the Naturschutzgebiete. Prohibited there is "die Nutzung zu Erholungs- und Freizeitzwecken, wie Lagern, Zelten, Campieren und das Anfachen von Feuer, ausser an den bezeichneten Stellen", and also "das Verlassen der markierten Wege". The nearest zone of that kind is 1'919 metres south-east.
• Art. 18, the Lebensraum Kerngebiet Calfeisental (LRK 4). Prohibited there is "die Nutzung zu Erholungs- und Ferienzwecken, wie zelten, campieren und das Anfachen von Feuer, ausser an den dazu bezeichneten Stellen". The eastern edge of that zone is 1'169 metres west of the pin.

What happens if you ignore the ordinance. Art. 28 says contraventions are dealt with under art. 24 ff. of the federal Nature and Heritage Protection Act and art. 132 of the cantonal building act. There is no fixed-penalty tariff for camping, because at this point there is no camping prohibition to breach. Inside the Kerngebiet Calfeisental, that changes.³

And there is a seasonal closure in the same ordinance, for the valley beyond. Art. 20 shuts the Wildruhezone Calfeisental to entry and vehicles "bis 15. Mai, resp. bis zur Öffnung der Strasse von der Staumauer Gigerwald bis St. Martin". That zone starts about 1'339 m west-north-west, so it does not bind the pin, but it does govern the obvious onward walk.³¹

Pfäfers has no police regulation, and the canton has no camping norm

A "no prohibition found" verdict is only worth anything if you went and looked properly, so here is what looking properly meant.

The commune, in full. Pfäfers publishes its law through the cantonal publication platform, and the collection holds twenty acts. All twenty were downloaded and read, each one scanned for Campier, Camping, Zelt, Biwak, Lagern, Übernacht and Wohnwagen with a count of known control words printed next to the result, so that an unreadable file could not pass itself off as a silent one. One file, the implementation act for the cantonal Gastwirtschaftsgesetz, turned out to be a scan with no text layer; it was run through OCR and is silent.⁵

One communal act does mention tents, and it is a tax. The Kurtaxenreglement charges a visitor's tax on every overnight guest in the commune and sets a flat annual rate for "Standplätze für Zelte, Wohnwagen und Wohnmobile". That is a levy on pitches at accommodation businesses, collected through the operator. It is neither a permission to camp nor a prohibition, and it should not be quoted as either.⁵

The canton, also in full. Six cantonal acts were pulled complete and searched in lower case, which matters in German because the nouns and the marginal headings are capitalised:⁴

• Einführungsgesetz zur eidgenössischen Waldgesetzgebung, sGS 651.1, and its ordinance sGS 651.11: silent. This is the one people expect to bite, because the pin is in forest. It does not. St. Gallen has no cantonal prohibition on spending a night in the woods.
• Übertretungsstrafgesetz, sGS 921.1: silent. No camping offence exists in the cantonal catalogue of minor offences, which means there is no cantonal fine to issue.
• Naturschutzverordnung, sGS 671.1: silent.
• Polizeigesetz, sGS 451.1: the only overnight provision in it is art. 52bis, which obliges accommodation businesses to have guests fill in a registration form. Nothing about tents.
• Planungs- und Baugesetz, sGS 731.1: mentions camping twice, both times as construction law. Art. 17 lists "Camping- und Zeltplätze" among the facilities that belong in an intensive recreation zone, and the exemption list treats event tents and mobile structures as not needing a building permit for up to three months a year. That is law about buildings and installations, and it says nothing about a walker's single night.

Access to the forest itself is federal and it is generous, but it stops short of a bed. Art. 699 of the Civil Code gives a right of access to forest and pasture within customary limits, and the federal Forest Act repeats it for forests. Both are about walking through and picking berries. Neither has ever been a right to sleep on someone's land, which is why the next section is about the owner.⁹

The owner, the direction not to walk, and the one sanctioned bed in the valley

Below the treeline, the person who decides is the landowner, and here that person is identifiable.

The Ortsgemeinde Vättis. In canton St. Gallen the Ortsgemeinden are the old citizens' corporations that still hold the forest and the alps, and this one says plainly what it owns: forest, most of it protection forest, three alps, roads and a long list of field, forest and hiking paths. Its territory, in its own words, "reicht von der Schüelabrücke bis zum Gigerwald (Calfeisental) und bis über die Grenze zum Kanton Graubünden (Kunkelstal)". This pin sits inside that stretch. The address is Langgasse 29, 7315 Vättis.⁷

So the honest route, if you want this exact ground, is to ask them for it. That is a real option rather than a formula: it is a small body, the ground is working forest, and a single considerate night with a name attached is a different conversation from an anonymous tent. What we cannot tell you is what they will say, because we have not published an answer we did not get. Ask before the day, not at dusk.

Now the direction not to walk. The instinct at this pin is to head up the valley towards the Gigerwaldsee and St. Martin, and that instinct walks you into every prohibition in the area at once.¹³

• 1'169 m west: the Kerngebiet Calfeisental, where art. 18 bans tents and camping outright.
• About 1'339 m west-north-west: the Wildruhezone Calfeisental, closed to entry until 15 May or until the road from the Gigerwald dam to St. Martin opens.
• About 1'357 m west-north-west: the federal game reserve Graue Hörner, no. 15. Inside a federal game reserve, free tenting and camping is prohibited by federal ordinance, only the canton may permit an exception, and the fixed penalty is CHF 150.
• About 1'165 m west: the perimeter of the UNESCO World Heritage Tectonic Arena Sardona, which is a conservation designation rather than a camping rule, but it tells you what kind of ground you have crossed into.

Going uphill is better than going west, but not by much. The Kerngebiet 223 metres south-south-west carries no tent ban, so the law does not stop you there. The terrain and the treeline still do: you are climbing into the same forest, and you stay under the treeline for a long way yet.

The valley does have a proper bed, and it is worth naming. Sankt Martin, the Walser settlement at the head of the Calfeisental, runs as an Alpwirtschaft and Berghotel with rooms, and it takes camper guests on its own ground on the condition that you eat there, dinner and breakfast. It is reachable by the valley road through the tunnels, which have a height limit around 2.6 m, and the road is a seasonal one. Reported conditions and prices change, so settle it with them directly: +41 81 306 12 34, info@sanktmartin.ch.⁸

Courtesy, which is not law. The Alpine Club's guidance is the usual standard: a single considerate night by a small group above the treeline is generally unproblematic, an emergency bivouac is always permitted, and you should not camp close to huts or grazed alps without asking. Two halves of that apply badly here. You are not above the treeline, and there is a farm building 81 metres away.⁹

Where you can legally sleep

• At the pin, no norm stops you, and we still say no. Closed forest at 1'426 m, 11.7 degrees on the bench and 16 to 26 around it, no trail within 423 m, a farm building at 81 m, and no landowner's word⁶.
• With the Ortsgemeinde Vättis behind you, this changes. They own the forest and the paths here. Their yes is the thing that would turn this from advised against into a legitimate night out⁷.
• Not 1.2 kilometres west. The Kerngebiet Calfeisental bans tents and camping under art. 18 of the Schutzverordnung, and the game reserve and the wildlife rest zone start just beyond it¹.
• Not in the Calfeisental between 16 December and 15 May, or before the Gigerwald to St. Martin road opens, whichever is later. That is the Wildruhezone closure and it is a separate rule from the camping one.
• Sankt Martin, up the valley, has rooms and takes camper guests with half board. It is the one place in this valley where an overnight stay is arranged rather than argued about⁸.

General rules for wild camping

None of this is law, and at this pin the law is not what stops you. It is worth reading because Pfäfers is one of the few communes in this corpus with no police regulation at all. That is a lot of trust to hand to visitors, and it lasts exactly as long as the visitors deserve 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 verdict is a terrain and ownership verdict for one coordinate. It does not claim that an overnight stay at this point is unlawful: at the point itself, no communal or cantonal prohibition was found, and that finding is stated as clearly as the research supports it. It does claim that one inside the Kerngebiet Calfeisental is prohibited, and that boundary is 1'169 metres west and is not marked on the ground. Zone boundaries are read from the cadastre and can be revised; the Schutzverordnung dates from 2011 and a commune may amend it. Before every tour, check the current sources yourself and follow instructions 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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