Wild camping at the Milchspüelersee: a lake that looks made for it, deep inside a reserve that forbids it

One reserve, and it settles everything

Wild camping at the Milchspüelersee is a clean case with a hard answer. There is no communal reglement to weigh, no boundary a few metres away to argue about, no cantonal ordinance doing the work. One federal designation covers the lake, and it happens to be the oldest and one of the strongest in the country.

The lake sits inside the Freiberg Kärpf. Federal game reserve object 12 is the Kärpf, 5'897.6 hectares, and it is registered as an area with integral protection provisions. The pin at the lake is not near a boundary: ring-sampling from the point outward shows the nearest edge, on the southern side, roughly 1.0 to 1.2 kilometres away. The lake is in the interior. This is the deep case, not the edge case, and I checked it twice against the federal layer because "just outside a reserve" is a claim that has to be earned and here it is the opposite: firmly inside.²

The Kärpf is not an ordinary reserve. It is the oldest federal game reserve in Switzerland, protected in a local form since the sixteenth century and a federal reserve today, historically guarded by the Freibergschützen and enforced now by cantonal game wardens. That history matters here only as context: the legal weight comes from the current federal designation, not from age. But it tells you what kind of place this is, and how seriously the ban is taken on the ground.⁵

The federal camping ban. The rule is in Art. 5 para. 1 lit. e of the federal ordinance on game reserves, and its wording is short and absolute.

"Das freie Zelten und Campieren ist verboten. Vorbehalten bleibt die Benutzung offizieller Zeltplätze. Die Kantone können Ausnahmen bewilligen."Verordnung über die eidgenössischen Jagdbanngebiete (VEJ, SR 922.31), Art. 5 Abs. 1 lit. e: free tenting and camping is prohibited. The use of official campsites is reserved. The cantons may authorise exceptions.

Two things follow from the exact words. First, the ban catches a tentless bivouac as well as a tent. It reads "das freie Zelten und Campieren", tenting and camping, so a sleeping bag under the sky is not saved by the fact that nothing is pitched: Campieren covers the overnight stay whether or not there is a tent over it. Second, there is no integral-versus-partial qualifier in this paragraph, so the fact that the Kärpf is an integral reserve, the strictest category, only makes the answer clearer. The only opening the wording leaves is the last sentence, "the cantons may authorise exceptions", and that door is the canton's, not a hiker's.³

The federal fine is routinely overstated, and the real one has a number. The ordinance that bans camping contains no penalty provision at all. The CHF 20'000 everyone quotes is the ceiling in Art. 18 para. 1 of the Hunting Act, and that ceiling belongs to a case that goes in front of a judge. What actually happens to a tent is written down separately, in the federal schedule of fixed penalties: item 12005, "Freies Zelten oder Campieren in eidgenössischen Jagdbanngebieten", free tenting or camping in federal game reserves, CHF 150, citing Art. 18 para. 1 lit. e and para. 3 of the Hunting Act together with Art. 5 para. 1 lit. e of the game-reserve ordinance. That citation also answers whether the Hunting Act reaches a tent at all, because the Confederation wrote the chain out itself. So the prohibition is beyond argument, and the number to expect is CHF 150.⁴

Why consent is not a way in

On many spots outside a reserve, the honest answer is that a tolerated night depends on asking the person whose ground it is. That instinct is right almost everywhere in the Swiss Alps and wrong here, and it is worth being precise about why, because it is the mistake most likely to end in a fine.

A landowner cannot legalise camping inside a reserve. The camping ban in the Freiberg Kärpf is federal, in Art. 5 para. 1 lit. e of the game-reserve ordinance. Private consent does not switch off a federal prohibition. So it does not matter whether you find the alp tenant, whether they are friendly, or whether you offer to pay: none of them owns the power to permit what the ordinance forbids. There is no consent fee at the Milchspüelersee, and the reason there is none is that consent cannot make camping legal here in the first place.³⁵

The one door is the canton's, and it will not open for this. The last sentence of Art. 5 para. 1 lit. e reserves exceptions to the cantons. In Glarus that is the Abteilung Jagd und Fischerei in the Departement Bau und Umwelt, which administers the reserve. A cantonal exception is built for defined purposes such as research or management, not for a hiker who wants a sunrise, and it is least likely of all in the integral-protection core of the country's oldest reserve, which is exactly where this lake sits. Asking costs a phone call, but the answer for recreational camping is no.⁵

Does the ban catch a bivouac without a tent? Yes. The federal wording is "das freie Zelten und Campieren", and the "und Campieren" limb reaches an overnight stay whether or not a tent is pitched. A sleeping bag on the shore of the Milchspüelersee is caught the same as a tent. There is no wording gap to walk through here, unlike at some communal spots where the reglement only names Zelten.³

What the maps say

The lake: WGS84 46.92323 / 9.07854, LV95 2'724'894.87 / 1'198'208.58. The federal height service returns 2'195.6 metres for that point, which matches the roughly 2'196 the map carries for the Milchspüelersee.²

I did not take the reserve status on trust. An identify on the federal game-reserve layer, ch.bafu.bundesinventare-jagdbanngebiete, at the lake's LV95 point and at tolerance 0 returns a direct hit on object 12, "Kärpf", 5'897.6 hectares, "Gebiet mit integralen Schutzbestimmungen". I ran it twice, once as a plain point query and once re-confirmed independently, because the whole verdict rests on this one fact. Ring-sampling outward from the pin puts the nearest boundary, on the southern side, roughly 1.0 to 1.2 kilometres away, so this is deep interior and not a pin that could be nudged out of the reserve by GPS error.²

What came back empty at the lake, each checked on its own layer: no Wildruhezone, no BLN landscape object, no raised bog, fen, floodplain or moor at the pin. That absence changes nothing, because the reserve alone is dispositive: even if a moor or a rest zone had turned up it could only have added to the ban, not removed it. The single decisive layer is the game reserve, and it answers with a clean hit.²

The commune, for completeness. The lake is in Glarus Süd, canton Glarus, which is the enclosing commune for this whole southern part of the canton. There is no communal camping reglement doing the work here and no need for one: the federal reserve settles the question before any communal rule would be reached. This article deliberately cites no cantonal Glarus article number, because the federal norm is what decides it and the federal norm is what has been verified.¹

One thing this spot passes that many do not. At 2'196 metres the Milchspüelersee is above the local tree line, which runs roughly 1'900 to 2'100 metres here, on open alpine ground by a lake. Our own first filter is whether anyone would sensibly sleep somewhere at all, and a shore like this passes it easily. That is exactly why the legal answer had to be worked out properly rather than waved away: the ground says yes and the reserve says no, and the reserve wins.

Where you can legally sleep

• Leglerhütte SAC, roughly 460 metres north-north-east and above the lake at 2'273 metres, Sektion Tödi, wardens Marcel Knobel and Simone Landolt, +41 55 640 81 77, leglerhuette.ch. This is the obvious and much warmer answer to wanting to be up here at sunrise, and it leaves the lake a short walk away.
• Licensed campsites in the valley, down in the Sernftal and around Glarus Süd, which is the standard the federal ordinance measures a tent against with "offizielle Zeltplätze".
• Not the lake, and not the ground around it. The Milchspüelersee is roughly a kilometre inside the integral core of the Freiberg Kärpf, where free tenting and camping is forbidden by federal law and no local consent can change it.

General rules for wild camping

This applies wherever you are genuinely allowed to sleep outside, which at this lake means nowhere. Carry it to the places where you are: it is not legal text, but decency and common sense, and it is the reason the few remaining tolerances still exist.

• 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.

Reserve boundaries, ordinances and contact details change. 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, and nothing here is aimed at someone caught out by weather in the mountains. 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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