Wild camping at the Limmernsee: a court order covers the whole basin, and the pin is on the water

One court order, and it says bivouac out loud

Wild camping at the Limmernsee is not decided by a communal reglement, because canton Glarus does not work that way. It is decided by a civil court order, and the people who obtained it are the two owners of the ground.

The instrument is a gerichtliches Verbot, also called a richterliches Verbot, of the Kantonsgericht Glarus, case ZG.2024.00752, decided on 16 December 2024 and published in the cantonal Amtsblatt on 8 January 2025. The applicants are Kraftwerke Linth-Limmern AG together with Gemeinde Glarus Süd. It prohibits Campieren, Biwakieren und Drohnen on Grundstücke 772 und 779, Grundbuch Linthal, described as lying in the areas Muttenwändli, Muttenalp, Muttenkopf and Muttenwand.¹

Three things about this kind of order are worth knowing before you decide anything. It binds everyone, not just the neighbours, which is the whole point of the procedure. It is prosecuted only on the applicant's complaint, so nothing happens automatically. And it can be defeated by anyone who files a written objection with the court within thirty days of publication and posting, without giving reasons. That window opened on 8 January 2025 and closed in February 2025, so for everybody reading this it is shut and the prohibition stands.²

Note the second word in the list. Most of the communal bans we work through are written around tents, caravans and motorhomes, which leaves an untested gap for someone lying in a bivvy bag with nothing pitched. This order names Biwakieren expressly, alongside Campieren. So the tentless night, which is genuinely open in most of canton Bern, has a clean answer here: it is inside the text. The third word, drones, is part of the same order and matters for anyone planning to film.¹

"Seit der Sommer-Saison 2025 ist in den Gebieten Muttenwändli, Muttenalp, Muttenkopf und Muttenwand ein Camping- und Drohnen Flugverbot in Kraft. [...] Es werden Kontrollen durchgeführt und Zuwiderhandlungen gebüsst."Muttseehütte SAC, current notice, read 30 July 2026: since the 2025 summer season a camping and drone ban has been in force in the areas Muttenwändli, Muttenalp, Muttenkopf and Muttenwand; controls are carried out and breaches are fined. The hut is the operator closest to the ground, and its notice is the best evidence that the order is live in the current season.

Now the number, because the wrong one is in circulation. Art. 258 of the Civil Procedure Code lets the court attach a fine of up to CHF 2'000, and that is the ceiling on this order. The CHF 20'000 figure that gets quoted for canton Glarus comes from art. 20 of the cantonal nature protection act, it applies to breaches of a protection provision attached to a specific protected object, and no such object bans camping here. What a camper at the Limmernsee is actually exposed to is CHF 2'000.²⁶

Why the whole basin, the part of that which is inference, and why there is nobody to ask

Canton Glarus has no camping act at all. Not in the police act, not in the police ordinance, not in the hunting act or its ordinance, not in the wildlife rest zone ordinance, not in the nature protection act. If you search the cantonal statute book for a camping prohibition you will come away thinking Glarus is wide open, and you will be wrong, because the canton routes camping bans somewhere else entirely.⁶

The route is written into the cantonal introductory act to the Civil Code: whoever wants a prohibition with a fine attached must apply to the Kantonsgericht, which establishes it and orders publication in the Amtsblatt. That is why the binding rule for this lake is a case number rather than an article number, and it is why this ban is invisible to every map layer. A gerichtliches Verbot is a civil-law instrument, it is not a public-law restriction, and it will never show up on a cadastral extract.²³

So what exactly does it cover? The order names two parcels and four areas, and the reading matters. I opened four current gerichtliche Verbote from the same court and the operative clause is always anchored on the parcel, with the address or place name doing nothing but locating it.

"Hiermit wird jedermann verboten, auf der Liegenschaft Nr.315, Grundbuch Bilten, Gemeinde Glarus Nord, Hauptstrasse 33/35, 8865 Bilten, Fahrzeuge aller Art abzustellen."Gerichtliches Verbot ZG.2026.00456, Amtsblatt des Kantons Glarus, published 1 July 2026. One of four current orders from the same court read for the template. In each of them the prohibition attaches to the parcel and the place name is a locator, not a limit.

On that template, "auf den Grundstücken 772 und 779, Grundbuch Linthal, in den Gebieten Muttenwändli, Muttenalp, Muttenkopf und Muttenwand" makes the two parcels the operative scope and the four Gebiete the address. And the two parcels are the basin. Both exist, both are in Grundbuch Linthal, both are exactly where the order says they are, and I checked that against the canton's own cadastre service rather than taking it on trust: parcel 779, EGRID CH832277690424, 771.9 hectares, running 3.1 by 6.5 kilometres and holding the lake, both dams and the Muttsee; parcel 772, EGRID CH227858226914, 5'535.8 hectares, surrounding it.³

Here is the honest part, and it is one sentence. I could not re-read the order's own text. The online Amtsblatt keeps only a handful of gerichtliche Verbote in its live listing and the January 2025 publication has aged out of it, which I confirmed rather than assumed by running the same date lookup against a publication I know is still listed. So the case details above rest on our own earlier Amtsblatt research, and the parcel-wide reading of the scope is a well-supported inference from four same-court templates, not a quotation of the operative clause. A signed copy can be requested from the Kantonsgericht Glarus in one letter, and if it ever contradicts this we will say so here.¹

What that uncertainty does not do is move the verdict. Run the narrow reading, where the four Gebiete limit the scope rather than locate it, and the answer is the same: the only realistic camp at this destination is the terrace ground on the Muttenchopf, and Muttenkopf is a named Gebiet on any reading of the sentence. There is no version of this order under which sleeping at the Limmernsee is lawful.⁵

One practical consequence: if you meet a sign up here, it is the real kind. A genuine court prohibition names the court, carries a date and a case number and states a franc amount, and this one does all three.²

The pin is under water, and above the waterline there is nowhere to sleep

The requested point is LV95 2'720'127 / 1'188'415, WGS84 46.836037 / 9.013369, terrain height 1'834.2 metres. The federal water-body layer returns the standing-water polygon "Limmerensee" there. To put a number on how far under the surface that is, I sampled 120 points along the mapped lake boundary: the median comes out at 1'855.2 metres, consistent with the scheme's 1'857 metre full-supply level. The pin is about twenty-one metres below it. It is a gazetteer label sitting at the middle of the lake, on ground that is submerged whenever the reservoir is anywhere near full.⁵

Worth saying because it changes how you read the shore: this is a pumped-storage basin in the Linthal 2015 scheme. The level moves fast and it moves far. Ground that looks like a dry gravel bench in the evening can be under water within hours, which is its own reason not to sleep near the waterline even before anyone mentions the law.

So where could you actually pitch? I ran a 100 metre terrain grid over the basin, 1'209 points, and derived slope from the neighbours. Above the full-supply line, within 2.5 kilometres of the pin, the number of cells with a slope under 12 degrees and under 12 metres of local relief is one, and it sits at 2'589 metres on the far side of the south-east ridge, outside both parcels and nowhere anybody is walking to. The basin floor's other flat area is the reservoir surface itself. The east shore climbs 1'834 to 1'876 to 1'980 to 2'064 metres across 300 metres; the west shore 1'834 to 1'865 to 1'949 to 2'128; the south end is a gorge.⁵

The three places a person would realistically consider, and where each of them falls:

• The Muttenchopf terraces, about 2'370 metres, 1.73 kilometres north of the pin. This is the viewpoint that filled with tents, up to thirty a day at the peak, and it is the reason the order exists. Parcel 779, and inside the named Gebiet Muttenkopf. Banned on either reading.
• The north-end shore bench, about 1'875 metres near the Limmern dam. Slope 17 to 19 degrees, poor ground, right in the drawdown band. Parcel 779.
• The south-end inflow, about 1'865 metres. Slope 14 to 19 degrees, alluvial, exposed. Parcel 779.

Everything else at this pin is empty, and the empties were checked properly. No federal inventory reaches it: no game reserve, no wildlife rest zone, no BLN object, no mire, floodplain or amphibian object, each query run alongside an invalid-layer control that errors rather than returning an empty set. On the cantonal side, nine nature protection and forest layers come back empty, and two positive controls in the same request pattern do return features, so the empties are genuine absences rather than a query artefact.⁵⁶

The Kärpf question, because people ask it. The oldest game reserve in Europe runs over the ridge to the north-east, and its nearest boundary is 4'029 metres from the pin. It does not reach the Limmernsee, and the federal tent ban that applies inside game reserves is not what stops you here.⁵

One last detail that explains why this ban is so easy to miss. The public-law restriction extracts for both parcels contain nothing about camping at all: parcel 779 carries a single contaminated-sites entry over 0.2 percent of its area, parcel 772 five small forest-reserve fragments. That is the expected result, not a contradiction. A gerichtliches Verbot is never registered as a public-law restriction, which is precisely why this one has to be found in the Amtsblatt and why no map will ever show it to you.³

Where you can legally sleep

• Muttseehütte SAC, on the trail at Muttenalp above the lake, 76 beds, +41 55 643 32 12, mail@muttseehuette.ch. It is the obvious answer if you wanted a night high on this ridge, and it is the same operator whose notice tells you the ban is being controlled.⁴
• Basecamp Panixerpass, in the next valley, which is the commune's own sanctioned tent alternative and exists because of exactly this problem.⁷
• Campsites down in the Linth valley, if you are driving in and want a base for the cable car day.
• Not the Muttenchopf terraces, which is the one place people mean when they ask about this lake, and the one place the order was written for.
• No drones in any of the four named areas. Same order, same fine.

General rules for wild camping

This applies wherever you are genuinely allowed to sleep outside, which around this reservoir is nowhere. Carry it to the places where you are. It is not legal text, but decency and common sense, and it is worth remembering that thirty tents a day on one viewpoint is what turned a tolerated place into a court order.

• 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 July 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.

One limit stated openly: the text of the court order could not be re-read for this article, because the publication has aged out of the online Amtsblatt listing, so the exact geographic reach of its operative clause is an inference from comparable orders of the same court rather than a quotation. Both possible readings lead to the same answer for a camper. Beyond that, court prohibitions can be obtained, extended or lifted at any time, and Gemeinde Glarus Süd has had a camping reglement of its own in preparation. Before every tour, check the current sources yourself, read any sign on site properly, and follow instructions given to you there. 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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