Wild camping at the Lägh dal Lunghin: the water splits three ways, the law does not
This is the source lake of the Inn, and the pass above it is the only place in Europe where three sea basins meet. Three communes meet almost on the same spot. It would be neat if the legal answer split the same way. It does not: the point is in Bregaglia, and Bregaglia has written one prohibition that covers all of it.
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.
Three communes meet here, and it changes nothing
Wild camping at the Lägh dal Lunghin looks like it should be a border puzzle. The Pass dal Lunghin, 1.2 km south-west of the lake, is the only triple watershed in Europe: the Inn leaves here for the Danube and the Black Sea, the Julia for the Rhine and the North Sea, the Maira for the Po and the Adriatic. The lake itself is where the Inn starts.
The communal boundaries almost copy that. Measured out from the point by bisection, Sils im Engadin/Segl begins 346 m to the north-north-east, and Surses begins 606 to 1'100 m to the north-west. Everything east, south-east, south and south-west stays Bregaglia for at least 3 km.7
So you are standing where three communes nearly touch, on the mountain where three seas divide. And the legal answer is the least romantic thing in this article: the point is in Bregaglia, and Bregaglia has one rule that covers its entire territory.
"All'infuori delle zone riservate a questo scopo (campeggi, zone camper), sul terreno comunale è proibito campeggiare come pure posteggiare la vettura a scopo di pernottamento. Su richiesta il municipio può concedere una deroga."Art. 11 Divieto di campeggio, Regolamento di polizia comunale di Bregaglia: outside the zones reserved for the purpose (campsites, camper zones), camping on communal ground is prohibited, as is parking a vehicle in order to sleep in it. On request the municipio may grant a derogation.
Two prohibited acts, one carve-out for designated campsites, and an exception clause. There is no campsite zone at 2'485 m, so the first half of that sentence is the whole of it. The regulation was approved by the communal assembly on 28 April 2011 and is published as a signed scan.1
Walking north does not help
The obvious move, when a boundary is 346 m away, is to walk. It does not work here, for two separate reasons.
The first is legal. Sils im Engadin/Segl bans it in exactly the same terms, and locks it twice: art. 11 of its police law and art. 109 of its 2024 building law carry the identical sentence, that camping and the parking of vehicles for staying or overnighting are prohibited on the communal territory. Fines run from CHF 50 to CHF 10'000, with fixed penalties capped at CHF 300.7
"Das Campieren und das Abstellen von Fahrzeugen zu Aufenthalts- und Übernachtungszwecken sind auf dem Gemeindegebiet verboten."Art. 11 Campierverbot, Polizeigesetz der Gemeinde Sils i. E./Segl, repeated word for word as art. 109 Abs. 1 of the 2024 Baugesetz.
The second is the ground. The Sils boundary to the north runs up the slope, and that slope measures 23 to 64 degrees. There is nothing to sleep on between the shore and the ridge. The boundary is close in metres and irrelevant in practice.
What about Surses?
Honest answer, because it is the one place this article cannot close. Surses publishes no communal police law. Its legal collection lists 28 acts and 56 documents, and none of them is one. A draft police law, whose art. 12 is headed Campieren, went to the communal assembly of 7 April 2025, and its final article says it enters into force on the date the assembly decides. But the version published is the draft, with the approval line left blank.7
So Surses is unsettled, not open, and I am not going to sell it to you as a loophole. It also starts 606 m away on the far side of the pass, uphill, which makes it a decision about your evening rather than a step to the side.
CHF 50 for a tent, and a deposit if you are not Swiss
Bregaglia publishes its fixed-penalty schedule, and it has a row for exactly this. It is the most useful line in the whole file.2
"20.f.1 / 20.f.2 · Campeggio in luogo proibito con tende, camper e simili · 100.00 per camper e vetture, 50.00 per tende · Art. 11"Row from the Elenco delle multe disciplinari del Comune di Bregaglia. Camping in a prohibited place with tents, campers and similar: CHF 100 for campers and vehicles, CHF 50 for tents.
CHF 50 for a tent is the realistic figure, and it is worth knowing that the schedule is not the ceiling. Art. 22 of the regulation lets the municipio punish breaches in an ordinary administrative penal procedure with fines up to CHF 10'000, and art. 23 sets disciplinary fines up to CHF 500. The schedule sits inside that frame, issued by the municipio under art. 23 para. 2, first on 3 May 2011 and last amended on 5 June 2023.2
Paying within 30 days closes the case. Objecting sends it to the municipio, which then decides in the ordinary procedure and, in the regulation's own words, is not bound by the schedule. Which is a polite way of saying that arguing about CHF 50 can cost more than CHF 50, before you add the procedure fee of CHF 50 to 250 under art. 24.2
One detail for anyone who is not resident in Switzerland, and the person who asked for this article wrote from the Netherlands, so it is not hypothetical: art. 23 para. 6 provides that an offender without a Swiss domicile who does not pay on the spot has to secure the amount with a deposit. It is a small sum, but it is collected differently from how you might expect.
The landowner cannot help you
A camping prohibition in a communal police regulation is public law. It already occupies the field, so the person who owns the field cannot lift it. This is the single most common way people get Graubünden wrong, and it is the opposite of how spots like the Fälensee or the Seealpsee work, where the alp tenant's yes is the entire legal route.
Here the yes has to come from the commune. Fortunately, the commune wrote down twice how to get it.
Two doors, and they are both real
What makes this restricted rather than a flat no is that the exception is not something a reader has to argue for. It is written into the prohibition, and then written again somewhere else.
Door one is in the ban itself. The last sentence of art. 11 reads "Su richiesta il municipio può concedere una deroga": on request, the municipio may grant a derogation. Same instrument, same article, no separate procedure named. You write and ask.1
Door two is in the building law, and it is more specific than the first. This ground belonged to the former municipality of Stampa, which merged into Bregaglia in 2010, and the Stampa building law is still the act the cadastre names as being in force here. Its art. 53 governs the campsite zone, and its last paragraph reaches outside it.3
"Attendamenti di durata limitata al di fuori della zona di campeggio possono essere autorizzati dal Consiglio comunale."Art. 53 para. 6, Legge edilizia Stampa: tented encampments of limited duration outside the campsite zone may be authorised by the communal council.
Read that carefully, because it is unusually favourable wording for a Swiss communal building law. It contemplates precisely the thing you want to do: a tent, outside the campsite zone, for a limited duration. It does not say a festival, and it does not say a commercial camp. It says a limited-duration tented camp, and it says it can be authorised.
The one caveat is the office. The article names the Consiglio comunale, which was the pre-merger Stampa authority; since 2010 the address is Bregaglia. So write to Bregaglia and let them route it. The route is solid even where the job title is fifteen years out of date.
How to actually ask
Comune di Bregaglia, Via ai Crott 17, CH-7606 Promontogno. Telephone +41 81 822 60 60, email cancelleria@bregaglia.ch. The counter is open Monday to Friday 10:00 to 11:30, and Monday, Wednesday and Friday 14:00 to 17:00.
Keep it to five lines: the date, one small tent, two people, one night, the coordinates, arriving in the evening and gone by morning, no fire, everything carried out. Ask in Italian or German if you can. A derogation under art. 11 and an authorisation under art. 53 para. 6 are the same conversation from the commune's side, so you do not need to pick one; describe what you want to do and let them choose the instrument.
And if the answer is no, it is a no. The point of a named route is that it gives you a real chance, not a formality to tick.
What the cadastre says about this exact spot
Graubünden runs a cadastre of public-law restrictions, and for this ground it returns a legally authoritative answer rather than a guess. The parcel is EGRID CH848817720648, and it is enormous: 14'366'027 m² of altro territorio comunale, the unbuilt remainder of the commune. A parcel that size tells you nothing on its own, so I pulled the extract with geometry and tested the point itself against every restriction in it.4
Three land-use answers cover the point.
- Zona agricola, art. 57. An agricultural zone. It governs what may be built, not who may walk or sleep.
- Zona di protezione del paesaggio, art. 62. A landscape protection zone, for "paesaggi naturali e culturali di particolare bellezza e singolarità". It prohibits buildings and installations, terrain modification, and extraction or deposit of material. It says nothing about camping and nothing about access.
- Zona di protezione delle acque sorgive, art. 63. A spring water protection zone. This is the one that should change your behaviour.
"All'interno della zona di protezione delle acque sorgive non sono ammessi edifici e impianti né utilizzazioni che potrebbero mettere in pericolo l'esistenza delle acque."Art. 63 para. 1, Legge edilizia Stampa: inside the spring water protection zone, no buildings, installations or uses that could endanger the water are permitted.
You are 13 m from the source of the Inn, inside a zone whose stated purpose is protecting drinking water. Nobody is going to fine a hiker for standing there. But "utilizzazioni che potrebbero mettere in pericolo l'esistenza delle acque" is the reason to be absolutely disciplined about the two things people get lazy about at high lakes: no soap and no washing in or near the water, and no latrine anywhere near the shore or the inflow. Carry it out, or go a long way downhill and well away from any watercourse.
The zone that is not here
This is the useful negative, and it took the geometry to establish. The Stampa building law also has a Zona di protezione della natura, art. 61, and that one is different in kind: para. 3 empowers the building authority to issue outright access bans, "divieti di accesso". If the lake were inside one, the answer in this article could have been much harder.
It is not. The point falls outside every nature protection polygon on the parcel, and the nearest one is 1'416 m away. So the category that could have shut the door does not reach the water.4
For completeness on the federal layer: the lake sits inside the inventory object Oberengadiner Seenlandschaft und Berninagruppe, BLN 1908. That instrument binds federal and cantonal authorities in their planning decisions. It is not addressed to a person with a tent and carries no fine for one. Every other federal query at the point comes back empty: no federal game reserve, no wildlife rest zone within a kilometre, no floodplain, no bog, no mire landscape, no dry grassland, no park of national importance.5
Graubünden itself has nothing to say
It is worth stating plainly, because people assume a cantonal rule exists and then go looking for a cantonal exception. There is no cantonal camping provision in Graubünden. I read the acts rather than trusting a summary.6
The cantonal police act, the nature and heritage protection act, the hunting act, the spatial planning act and the forest act return zero occurrences of Campieren, Zelt, Biwak, Lagern, Übernachten or Nächtigen, across roughly 2.1 million characters of text. The canton leaves this question entirely to its communes.
One instrument does mention tents, and it is worth knowing why it does not apply to you. The cantonal planning ordinance lists tents among structures that are exempt from a building permit: event tents, and "Iglus, Tipizelte und dergleichen für Übernachtungen in Skigebieten während der Wintersaison oder bei Bauernhöfen von Mai bis Oktober". That is planning law about Bauten und Anlagen, buildings and installations. It is describing igloo villages and farm glamping, not a backpacker's tent for one night, and it neither creates nor removes a prohibition for you.6
So the whole answer at this lake is communal. Which is exactly why the two doors in the previous section are the entire story.
If you get the yes: where the ground actually is
The point that was sent to me is not where you would sleep. It sits at 8.2 degrees and 13 m from the water, on the shoulder at the east end of the lake. Too steep to lie on, too close to the shore to be considerate, and on the side where the ground tips into the outflow.
Finding the alternative needed one correction that is worth flagging, because a naive terrain scan gets it badly wrong here. The flattest readings anywhere near this lake come back at 2'485.1 m at almost zero degrees, over and over. That is the lake surface. The national elevation model flattens water to the water plane, so an unmasked scan will confidently recommend that you pitch in the middle of the lake. Re-run with the lake outline masked out, on a 50 m grid, 586 samples of dry ground:7
- The best pitch is at the west end, LV95 2'771'631 / 1'143'076. 4.2 degrees, 2'486.8 m, and 44 m back from the shore. It is 559 m west of the requested point, toward the Pass dal Lunghin, and it is still Bregaglia.
- Its neighbour 2'771'631 / 1'143'126 is almost as good: 4.6 degrees, 48 m back from the water.
- If you want to be higher and further from the lake, the bench at 2'771'581 / 1'142'926 is 3.9 degrees at 2'534 m, 178 m from the shore.
- Avoid the north side entirely. It runs 23 to 64 degrees straight off the ridge.
All of those are in Bregaglia, which is what you want: they are covered by the permission you asked for, and none of them drifts into a commune you have not spoken to.
Getting there, and the ordinary answers
The walk up from Maloja, 2.2 km south-east and about 700 m below, takes roughly two hours. That is the standard approach, and it means Maloja is also the easy fallback: it has rooms and, in season, official pitches, which is the legal way to sleep in this commune without writing to anybody. The pass and the triple watershed are 1.2 km further on at 2'645 m, and Piz Lunghin is 1 km south-west at 2'780 m.
Two ground rules on top of the law. No open fire: art. 7 of the police regulation lets the municipio restrict or prohibit open fires, and at 2'485 m there is nothing to burn that should be burnt anyway. And art. 20 prohibits crossing meadows during the growing season, tariffed at CHF 50; at this altitude you are on grazed alp rather than hay meadow, but the pastures lower down on the walk from Maloja are exactly what that article is about.1
If you are working along this chain of lakes, the answers are consistent and you can plan the whole thing on one principle. The Silsersee below and the Silvaplanersee beyond it come out the same way and for the same reason: the commune bans it, the commune can lift it, and nobody else can.
General rules for wild camping
This applies to the lake and the terraces around it, and the water rule is stricter than usual because the point sits in a spring water protection zone: gas stove, never an open fire, no soap anywhere near the water, and everything carried 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.
Communal regulations change, and one point in this article is expressly unresolved: whether the neighbouring commune of Surses adopted the draft police law that went to its assembly in April 2025. The Bregaglia police regulation is published as a signed scan; its articles were transcribed from the page images rather than from machine text, and the wording is quoted in full above so you can check it against the original. 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. 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.
Frequently asked questions
Can you wild camp at the Lägh dal Lunghin?
How much is the fine?
Three communes meet near the lake. Can I just move into a different one?
Is the lake inside a protected area?
Does canton Graubünden ban camping?
Where would I actually pitch if I got permission?
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
- Regolamento di polizia comunale del Comune di Bregaglia, approved by the communal assembly on 28 April 2011 and published as a signed scan of six pages with no text layer; the articles below were transcribed from page images rendered at 200 dpi rather than from machine text. Art. 1: the regulation completes federal and cantonal legislation on public order and safety "sul territorio del Comune di Bregaglia". Art. 11 "Divieto di campeggio": "All'infuori delle zone riservate a questo scopo (campeggi, zone camper), sul terreno comunale è proibito campeggiare come pure posteggiare la vettura a scopo di pernottamento. Su richiesta il municipio può concedere una deroga." Art. 22 "Disposizioni penali": breaches are punished by the municipio in an ordinary administrative penal procedure, subject to art. 22 para. 2 and art. 23, with fines up to Fr. 10'000.-. Art. 23 "Multe disciplinari": disciplinary fines up to Fr. 500.- under art. 45 ff. of the cantonal act implementing the Code of Criminal Procedure; para. 5 provides that payment within 30 days closes the case and that on objection the municipio decides in the ordinary procedure without being bound by the schedule; para. 6 provides that an offender without a Swiss domicile who does not pay on the spot must secure the sum by deposit. Art. 24: procedure fees of Fr. 50.- to Fr. 250.-, up to Fr. 800.- in extended procedures. Also relevant: art. 7 on open fires, art. 16 on night quiet from 24:00 to 06:00, and art. 20 prohibiting crossing meadows during the growing season. Note for readers checking the drafting: arts. 6, 8 and 10 use the term "terreno pubblico", whereas art. 11 uses "terreno comunale"; read together with art. 1, that reads as the communal territory rather than only land owned by the commune. comunedibregaglia.ch. ↩
- Elenco delle multe disciplinari del Comune di Bregaglia, issued by the municipio on 3 May 2011 under art. 23 para. 2 of the communal police regulation, with amendments noted on 3 July 2012, 31 October 2022 and 5 June 2023. Rows 20.f.1 and 20.f.2: "Campeggio in luogo proibito con tende, camper e simili · 100.00 per camper e vetture, 50.00 per tende · Art. 11". Neighbouring rows for comparison: 20.c.1 lighting open fires during prohibition periods Fr. 100.-, 20.e.2 depositing or throwing away waste Fr. 50.-, 20.h.1 disturbing the night quiet Fr. 150.-, 20.k.2 crossing meadows during the growing season Fr. 50.-. This document has a text layer and was read directly. comunedibregaglia.ch. ↩
- Legge edilizia del Comune di Stampa, 2003 with LPTC/OPTC 2005 updates, named by the cadastre of public-law restrictions as the act in force for this ground; Stampa merged into the Comune di Bregaglia in 2010. Art. 53 "Zona di campeggio" para. 6: "Attendamenti di durata limitata al di fuori della zona di campeggio possono essere autorizzati dal Consiglio comunale." Para. 5 separately prohibits the permanent stationing of caravans, motorhomes and tents inside the campsite zone. Art. 57 "Zona agricola" restricts buildings to those needed for agricultural use. Art. 61 "Zona di protezione della natura" para. 2 prohibits buildings and installations of any kind, terrain modification, drainage, clearing, fertilising, material deposits and other disruptive uses, and para. 3 empowers the building authority to issue access bans: "Essa può in particolare emanare divieti di accesso." Art. 62 "Zona di protezione del paesaggio" para. 2 prohibits buildings and installations, terrain modification and the extraction or deposit of materials that conflict with the protection purpose, and makes no mention of camping or access. Art. 63 "Zona di protezione delle acque sorgive" para. 1: "All'interno della zona di protezione delle acque sorgive non sono ammessi edifici e impianti né utilizzazioni che potrebbero mettere in pericolo l'esistenza delle acque." oereblex.gr.ch. ↩
- Cadastre of public-law restrictions on landownership (ÖREB/RDPP) for canton Graubünden, extract taken 11 August 2026 for EGRID CH848817720648, parcel 1614 in Bregaglia, land registry area 14'366'027 m². Because a parcel of that size says nothing about a single point, the extract was requested with geometry and the point LV95 2'772'181 / 1'143'176 was tested against every restriction it contains by point-in-polygon. Restrictions covering the point: Zona agricola; Zona di protezione del paesaggio; Zona di protezione delle acque sorgive; Kommunale Planungszone; Empfindlichkeitsstufe III; and a hazard-zone compartment recorded as not yet examined. Restrictions present on the parcel but NOT covering the point: Zona di protezione della natura, of which the nearest polygon lies 1'416 m away, and Oggetto naturale at 1'242 m. Geometry audit, so the negative can be relied on: of 195 restrictions, 141 carry Surface geometry and all of them were tested; the remaining 54 are Point (5) and Line (49) types, so no area restriction was skipped. oereb.geo.gr.ch. ↩
- Official federal geodata, queried 11 August 2026 at the point LV95 2'772'181 / 1'143'176, terrain surface 2'489.7 m via the federal height service, commune Bregaglia at the point after filtering the boundary layer to the current year. Identify returns the BLN object "Oberengadiner Seenlandschaft und Berninagruppe", object number 1908, at the point, and empty results for federal game reserves, wildlife rest zones, raised bogs, fens, mire landscapes, floodplains, dry grasslands and pastures, amphibian sites, parks of national importance, Ramsar and Emerald sites. Every query ran alongside a deliberately invalid layer id as a control: that control 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. This control matters: an earlier run of these probes used a layer id that does not exist and silently reported "no hit" for BLN at a point that is in fact inside it. map.geo.admin.ch. ↩
- Cantonal law of Graubünden, read in full on 11 August 2026 through the cantonal legal collection API, with HTML entities unescaped before searching, because the API returns escaped text and a naive search for "übernacht" reads zero on a document that contains it. Zero whole-word occurrences of Campieren, Zelt, Biwak, Lagern, Übernachten, Nächtigen or Wohnwagen in: Polizeigesetz BR 613.000 (443'785 characters), Gesetz über den Natur- und Heimatschutz BR 496.000 (191'692), Jagdgesetz BR 740.000 (272'482) and BR 740.100 (85'053), Raumplanungsgesetz BR 801.100 (884'816), Waldgesetz BR 820.100 (208'637), and the ordinance BR 496.100 (153'477). Positive controls confirm the texts were actually searched: Polizei 197 and Busse 39 in BR 613.000, Jagd 345 and Wild 248 in BR 740.000, Bauzone 168 in BR 801.100. The single exception is the Raumplanungsverordnung BR 801.110, which mentions tents only among structures exempt from a building permit, namely stands, huts, booths and tents for events, and "Iglus, Tipizelte und dergleichen für Übernachtungen in Skigebieten während der Wintersaison oder bei Bauernhöfen von Mai bis Oktober, sofern keine festen sanitären Einrichtungen" installed. That is planning law on buildings and installations, not a rule addressed to a hiker. gr-lex.gr.ch. ↩
- Neighbouring communes and terrain, checked 11 August 2026. Commune boundaries were located by bisecting the boundary along twelve bearings from the point, sixteen iterations each: Sils im Engadin/Segl at 346 m NNE, 378 m ENE, 396 m NE, 446 m N and 606 m NNW; Surses at 735 m NW, 1'069 m WNW and 1'100 m W; no boundary within 3 km to the E, SE, S or SW. Sils im Engadin/Segl: art. 11 "Campierverbot" of its Polizeigesetz reads "Das Campieren und das Abstellen von Fahrzeugen zu Aufenthalts- und Übernachtungszwecken sind auf dem Gemeindegebiet verboten. Der Gemeindevorstand kann auf Gesuch hin Ausnahmen bewilligen."; art. 22 sets fines from Fr. 50.- to Fr. 10'000.- and art. 23a caps fixed penalties at CHF 300; art. 109 para. 1 of the Baugesetz der Gemeinde Sils i.E./Segl 2024 repeats the prohibition word for word. Both were extracted from the published PDFs. Surses: its published legal collection lists 28 acts across 56 documents and contains no communal police law, every occurrence of "Polizei" on that page being navigation; a draft Polizeigesetz whose art. 12 is headed "Campieren" was put to the Gemeindeversammlung of 7 April 2025, and its art. 40 provides that it enters into force on the date of the assembly decision, but the published copy is the draft with the approval line left blank, so it cannot be confirmed as in force. Terrain: 586 dry-ground samples on a 50 m grid, slope from a five-point stencil with a 25 m arm on the national elevation model, with the lake outline masked out using its mapped water polygon, because the model flattens water to the water plane and an unmasked scan returns the lake surface at 2'485.1 m as the flattest ground. Flattest dry ground 2'771'631 / 1'143'076 at 4.2 degrees, 2'486.8 m, 44 m from the shore; 2'771'631 / 1'143'126 at 4.6 degrees, 48 m; bench 2'771'581 / 1'142'926 at 3.9 degrees, 2'534 m, 178 m; the point itself 8.2 degrees, 13 m from the shore; north side 23 to 64 degrees. Distances: Lägh dal Lunghin centre 247 m, Pass dal Lunghin 1'248 m, Piz Lunghin 1'033 m, Maloja 2'154 m, Septimerpass 3'185 m. sils-segl.ch, surses.ch, geo.admin.ch. ↩