As of: 11 August 2026

Wild camping in the Muverans: the reserve boundary runs over both summits

You asked about the Muverans, plural, and the plural is the point. This is a massif, not a summit, and it is carved up between two federal game reserves, four communes and two cantons. Every one of those lines matters, and they all close the same way.

Leon Helg
Leon Helg · Legal situation checked in August 2026 · Published 11 August 2026
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.

What "wild camping" means here: one night. A small tent or a bivvy bag, up towards evening, gone in the morning. Not a base camp, not a camper van. Most Swiss bans are written against camping; whether a single night also falls under them depends on the exact wording, so this article checks that wording. The full difference: wild camping vs bivouacking.

Two federal reserves, and the line runs over the tops

Wild camping in the Muverans has to be answered for a massif rather than a point, because the name is plural and the ground underneath it is split several ways. The two summits are the Grand Muveran at 3'051.4 m and the Petit Muveran at 2'810.2 m, 1'547 metres apart. Between and around them sit two federal game reserves, and both carry the stricter of the two federal regimes, integral protection.5

Object no. 28 "Grand Muveran", 4'069.7 ha, integral · object no. 38 "Haut de Cry/Derborence", 5'549.6 ha, integralObject 28 also has a second, smaller part of 825.8 ha under partial protection rules.

The striking part is where the line falls. Measured against the reserve polygons and then cross-checked point by point against the federal query service, the boundary of object 28 passes within 0.3 metres of the Grand Muveran summit, and within 0.3 metres of the Petit Muveran summit. At that resolution there is only one honest way to put it: the reserve boundary runs over both tops. The usual mountain trick of stepping a little off the summit to get out from under a rule does not exist here, because you cannot tell from the ground which side of a line you are on when the line is the ridge you are standing on.

What the federal rule says

Inside a federal game reserve the rule is the same everywhere in Switzerland, and it is short.1

"Das freie Zelten und Campieren ist verboten. Vorbehalten bleibt die Benutzung offizieller Zeltplätze. Die Kantone können Ausnahmen bewilligen."Art. 5 para. 1 lit. e VEJ: free tenting and camping is prohibited, the use of official campsites is reserved, and the cantons may grant exceptions. The French reads "il est interdit de camper librement" and the Italian, most bluntly, "è vietato piantare tende o campeggiare", it is forbidden to pitch tents or to camp.

There is no carve-out for a tentless bivouac anywhere in it, and the only body that could permit anything else is the canton, not a hut warden, not an alp tenant, not the commune. The fixed penalty is CHF 150, listed by name at no. 12005 of the federal Fixed Penalties Ordinance, which means a slip on the spot rather than a proceeding.2

And the reserves are not a technicality on the edge of the map. Almost every place-name on the classic round of this massif is inside one of them: Anzeinde and the Refuge Giacomini are inside object 28 under integral protection, Derborence is inside object 38 under integral protection, and Pont de Nant is inside the partial-protection part of object 28. Walking the tour does not take you around the reserves. It takes you through them.5

The ground outside the reserves, and the sentence that closes it

So the real question is what governs the ground the reserves do not cover. To answer it rather than guess, I sampled a 500 metre grid over a 6 kilometre box centred between the two summits, 169 cells, and classified every one by commune and by reserve.5

Bex (VD): 68 cells integral, 17 partial, 8 free · Leytron (VS): 45 free · Chamoson (VS): 19 free, 8 integral · Conthey (VS): 4 integralFour communes and two cantons inside one 6 km box.

Every reserve-free cell within 1.5 km of the Grand Muveran summit is in Leytron, canton Valais. And Leytron's police regulation of 16 January 2008 does not leave a gap.3

"Le camping, le caravaning et ce qui leur est assimilable sont interdits en dehors des emplacements expressément prévus par l'Autorité."Art. 49: camping, caravanning and anything assimilable to them are forbidden outside the places expressly provided by the authority.

Read the middle of that sentence, because it is doing the work. "et ce qui leur est assimilable", and anything assimilable to them. Most Swiss communes ban "camping" and leave everyone arguing about whether a person in a bivvy bag is camping. Kandersteg and Vals answered that argument by excluding the tentless night from their definitions. Leytron answered it in the opposite direction: it wrote a clause that widens the ban to cover whatever resembles camping. A bivvy bag on the Rambert shoulder is squarely inside it.

There is also no back door in the article. It reserves only road-traffic law, not landowner consent, and the only lawful place is one the Autorité has expressly provided. The penalty sits at art. 74: a fine of Fr. 50.- to Fr. 5'000.-, and art. 71 adds that a contravention is punishable even where it is mere negligence.3

The neighbouring commune uses the identical sentence

Chamoson holds 19 of the reserve-free cells, starting 1.55 km from the summit. Its police regulation of 2019 carries the same clause, word for word, at art. 54: camping, caravanning "et ce qui leur est assimilable" are forbidden outside places expressly designated by the Autorité. The penalty is set at art. 78, a fine from CHF 10 to CHF 10'000. So crossing from Leytron into Chamoson changes the fine range and nothing else.4

Canton Valais adds nothing on top and takes nothing away. Its hunting law, its law on the protection of nature, landscape and sites, and its animal-protection implementing act were each read in full, and none of them contains a single occurrence of camping, bivouac or tent as whole words.4

The route that exists, and why you cannot get to it

There is one genuine consent route in this box, and it is worth naming precisely because it is the reason this article says no rather than "it depends". Bex, canton Vaud, in its police regulation of 2019, writes something quite different from its Valais neighbours.7

"Sauf autorisation exceptionnelle de la municipalité, il est interdit de camper sur le domaine public. ... Sur le domaine privé, le camping occasionnel n'est permis qu'avec l'accord du propriétaire, du locataire, du fermier ou du possesseur à un autre titre de l'immeuble. L'autorisation de la municipalité ... est obligatoire pour toute durée excédant quatre jours."Art. 23: camping on public land is forbidden save by exceptional municipal authorisation; on private land occasional camping is permitted with the agreement of the owner, tenant, farmer or other possessor, and a municipal authorisation is required only beyond four days.

That is a real route. On private ground in Bex, with the consent of whoever holds the land, an occasional night is permitted outright and the commune only enters the picture after four days. It is the same shape as the rule that decides the Dent de Jaman.

And on this massif you cannot use it. Of the 93 Bex cells in the box, 85 are inside a reserve, 68 of them under integral protection. The 8 free ones are down off the mountain: the nearest sits 2.75 km from the summit at 1'692.8 m, and the rest run down to 1'065 m in the valley. There is no Bex ground on the Muverans where the consent route and the absence of a reserve overlap. So the route exists in the book and not on the mountain, and a verdict has to describe the mountain.

What the ground is like, for completeness

The reserve boundary weaves right past the Cabane Rambert, which sits 11.1 metres outside object 38 and 713 metres outside object 28. Profiled on 400 metre radials from the hut, the flat ground on the reserve-free side comes in at 0.2 degrees 197 m to the north-north-west at 2'562 m, 0.6 degrees 183 m to the south-south-east at 2'475 m, and 0.8 degrees 163 m due south at 2'508 m. Several of the flattest samples immediately north and east of the hut turned out to be inside the reserve when queried individually.6

So the ground is there. That is not the same as permission, and this article is not an argument that you should use it: it is all Leytron, and art. 49 reaches it. The massif also sits inside the federal landscape inventory as part of "Diablerets – Vallon de Nant – Derborence", which binds authorities in their planning decisions rather than campers, and carries no fine of its own.5

One limit worth stating plainly: I did not establish what canton Vaud says at cantonal level, because the online collection did not return usable text and I would rather say so than assert a negative I have not checked. It makes no difference to the answer. The Bex ground on this massif is inside a federal reserve, so the federal prohibition governs it whatever the canton adds.

Sleep at the hut. The Cabane Rambert of the Swiss Alpine Club stands at 2'584 m, 990 metres from the Grand Muveran summit, in Leytron and outside both reserves. It is the standard base for the Grand Muveran and it is the one place on this mountain where spending the night is straightforwardly lawful. Book ahead and check the guarded season before you travel.6

There is no permission to ask for up here, and that is the unusual part. Inside the reserves only the canton could grant an exception, and none exists. Outside them, Leytron art. 49 and Chamoson art. 54 allow only places the Autorité has expressly provided, so there is no consent form and no landowner who can help. Bex is the one commune with a private-land consent route, and it has no reserve-free ground on the massif. If you want a tent rather than a bunk, the answer is to come down.

Coming down, the options are ordinary. Ovronnaz sits 5.5 km away at 1'288 m with the full range of valley accommodation and is the usual road head for the Rambert approach. The Cabane de la Tourche, 5.6 km west at 2'188 m in Lavey-Morcles, is also outside both reserves. If your plan was the tour rather than the summit, build it hut to hut: the walking is the good part and the reserves make the sleeping part decided for you anyway.6

Do not treat the summit ridge as a loophole. This is the single most important practical point in the article. With the reserve boundary running within 0.3 m of both tops, anywhere on the crest is either inside a federal reserve or close enough that you could not demonstrate otherwise. A CHF 150 fixed penalty is not the real cost; being the reason a wildlife reserve tightens its access rules is.

Two nearby spots on this site are worth reading if you are planning the wider area. The Dent de Jaman shows the Vaud consent route working where it actually applies, and Lac d'Emosson is the Valais case that proves this canton has no blanket ban of its own, which is exactly why the answer here comes down to two communal articles rather than a cantonal one.

General rules for wild camping

This applies across the whole massif, both cantons and all four communes, and the fire rule at this altitude in dry conditions is not negotiable: gas stove, never an open fire, 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.

Reserve perimeters are redrawn and communal regulations change, so check the current version before relying on any of this, and follow instructions on site. The boundary distances given here are measured against the official federal geodata and are metres, not certainties: at that scale a GPS reading is not a legal opinion. I did not establish canton Vaud's position at cantonal level, and say so in the text rather than implying a negative. 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 in the Muverans?
No. Every layer closes and there is no lawful pitch on the mountain. The massif is wrapped by two federal game reserves under integral protection, object no. 28 Grand Muveran and object no. 38 Haut de Cry Derborence, and inside either one art. 5 para. 1 lit. e VEJ prohibits free tenting and camping with no bivouac exception, at a fixed penalty of CHF 150. The ground the reserves do not cover near the summits is all in Leytron or Chamoson, and both communes ban camping, caravanning and anything assimilable to them outside places expressly provided by the authority. The lawful place to sleep is the Cabane Rambert.
How close is the reserve boundary to the summits?
It runs over them. Measured against the reserve polygons and cross-validated point by point against the federal query service, the boundary of object no. 28 passes within 0.3 m of the Grand Muveran summit and within 0.3 m of the Petit Muveran summit. At that resolution the honest description is that the reserve line follows the crest through both tops, so stepping off the summit does not reliably put you outside anything. The Cabane Rambert, by contrast, is a clear 11.1 m outside object no. 38 and 713 m outside object no. 28.
What exactly do the Valais communes forbid?
Camping, caravanning and anything assimilable to them. Leytron art. 49 and Chamoson art. 54 carry the same clause word for word: "Le camping, le caravaning et ce qui leur est assimilable sont interdits en dehors des emplacements ... par l'Autorité." The phrase "ce qui leur est assimilable" is the important part, because it widens the ban rather than carving out the tentless bivouac the way Kandersteg and Vals both did. Neither article reserves landowner consent; the only lawful ground is a place the authority has expressly provided. Fines run from CHF 50 to CHF 5000 in Leytron (art. 74) and from CHF 10 to CHF 10000 in Chamoson (art. 78).
Bex allows camping on private land. Does that help here?
It is a real route and you cannot reach it from the massif. Art. 23 of the Bex police regulation of 2019 permits occasional camping on private land with the agreement of the owner, tenant or farmer, and requires a municipal authorisation only beyond four days. But of the 93 Bex cells in a 6 km box around the summits, 85 are inside a reserve, 68 of them under integral protection. The 8 reserve-free ones are down off the mountain, the nearest 2.75 km from the summit at 1693 m and the rest down to 1065 m in the valley. There is nowhere on the Muverans where the Bex consent route and the absence of a reserve overlap.
Does the Tour des Muverans avoid the reserves?
No, it runs through them. Anzeinde and the Refuge Giacomini are inside object no. 28 under integral protection, Derborence is inside object no. 38 under integral protection, and Pont de Nant sits in the partial-protection part of object no. 28. The tour is a hut-to-hut walk by design and the reserves are one reason why. The Cabane Rambert at 2584 m and the Cabane de la Tourche at 2188 m are both outside the reserves; Ovronnaz at 1288 m, 5.5 km away, is the usual valley base.
Does canton Valais have its own camping ban?
No, and that is why the communal articles decide this. The Valais law on hunting and the protection of wild mammals and birds, the law on the protection of nature, landscape and sites, and the implementing act on animal protection were each read in full for this article, and none contains a single whole-word occurrence of camping, bivouac or tent. The often-repeated idea of a blanket Valais prohibition does not survive contact with the statutes. What exists instead is commune-by-commune regulation, and in Leytron and Chamoson it happens to be strict.
Leon Helg

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.

Swiss Guide Wildcamping Checker Color Grading

Sources

  1. Verordnung über die eidgenössischen Jagdbanngebiete (VEJ, SR 922.31), art. 5 para. 1 lit. e, consolidated version of 1 February 2025: "Das freie Zelten und Campieren ist verboten. Vorbehalten bleibt die Benutzung offizieller Zeltplätze. Die Kantone können Ausnahmen bewilligen." The French text of the same provision reads "il est interdit de camper librement. L'utilisation de campings officiels est réservée. Les cantons peuvent accorder des exceptions." and the Italian "è vietato piantare tende o campeggiare. È fatto salvo l'uso di campeggi ufficiali. I Cantoni possono accordare eccezioni." The reservation for partially protected zones contained in art. 5 belongs to lit. d, on carrying, keeping and using weapons and traps, and does not qualify lit. e; both reserves here are in any case under integral protection. Text retrieved from the federal legal filestore. fedlex.admin.ch. ↩
  2. Ordnungsbussenverordnung (OBV, SR 314.11), annex 2, consolidated version of 1 August 2026, entry no. 12005: "Freies Zelten oder Campieren in eidgenössischen Jagdbanngebieten (Art. 18 Abs. 1 Bst. e und Abs. 3 JSG, Art. 5 Abs. 1 Bst. e VEJ)", CHF 150. The same entry appears in French as "Camper librement dans les districts francs fédéraux" and in Italian as "Piantare tende o campeggiare in bandite federali", each at CHF 150. Text retrieved from the federal legal filestore. fedlex.admin.ch. ↩
  3. Règlement communal de police de la Commune de Leytron, du 16 janvier 2008, 28 pages, text extracted from the published PDF. Art. 49 "Camping et caravaning": "Le camping, le caravaning et ce qui leur est assimilable sont interdits en dehors des emplacements expressément prévus par l'Autorité. Demeurent réservées les dispositions spécifiques sur la circulation routière (LCR/LALCR)." The article is not limited to the public domain and reserves only road-traffic law, not landowner consent. Art. 71 provides that contraventions are punishable even where they result from simple negligence; art. 72 allows seizure of the objects used; art. 73 gives jurisdiction to the Tribunal de police; art. 74 al. 1 sets the penalty: "Toute contravention au présent Règlement qui ne tombe pas sous le coup des législations pénales fédérale ou cantonale sera punie d'une amende de Fr. 50.- à Fr. 5'000.-." leytron.ch. ↩
  4. Règlement de police de la Commune de Chamoson, 2019, 27 pages, published as a scan without a text layer and read by optical character recognition at 300 dpi. Art. 54 "Camping, pique-nique et caravaning", al. 2: "Le camping, le caravaning et ce qui leur est assimilable sont interdits en dehors des emplacements autorisés expressément désignés comme tels par l'Autorité", reserving only the federal road-traffic act of 19 December 1958 and its Valais implementing act of 30 September 1987. Art. 78 "Pénalités": a fine of not less than CHF 10.- and not more than CHF 10'000.-, reduced to a maximum of CHF 1'000.- for minors. Cantonal law of Valais, read in full through the cantonal legal collection API on 11 August 2026: the loi sur la chasse et la protection des mammifères et oiseaux sauvages (922.1), the loi sur la protection de la nature, du paysage et des sites (451.1) and the loi d'application de la loi fédérale sur la protection des animaux (455.1) each return zero whole-word occurrences of camp, tente, bivouac, Zelt, Campieren and biwak. chamoson.net. ↩
  5. Official federal geodata, queried 11 August 2026. Grand Muveran summit LV95 2'575'895 / 1'120'684, terrain surface 3051.4 m; Petit Muveran LV95 2'575'608 / 1'119'164, 2810.2 m; separation 1'547 m. Federal game reserves at the massif: object no. 28 "Grand Muveran", 4'069.7 ha, "Gebiet mit integralen Schutzbestimmungen", plus a second part of 825.8 ha under partial protection; object no. 38 "Haut de Cry/Derborence", 5'549.6 ha, integral. Distances computed against the reserve polygons returned by the identify service: the object 28 boundary lies 0.3 m from the Grand Muveran summit and 0.3 m from the Petit Muveran summit; the Cabane Rambert lies 11.1 m outside object 38 and 713.3 m outside object 28. The union of the three polygons was cross-validated against 84 independent identify queries on rings from 100 to 2'000 m with zero disagreements. A 500 m grid over a 6 km box centred between the summits, 169 cells, classified by commune and reserve: Bex (VD) 68 integral, 17 partial, 8 free; Leytron (VS) 45 free; Chamoson (VS) 19 free, 8 integral; Conthey (VS) 4 integral. Every reserve-free cell within 1.5 km of the Grand Muveran summit lies in Leytron; the nearest reserve-free Bex cell is 2.75 km from the summit at 1'692.8 m. The pin lies inside the federal landscape inventory object "Diablerets – Vallon de Nant- Derborence (partie ouest)". Every query ran alongside a deliberately invalid layer id: that control returned HTTP 400 while all real layers returned HTTP 200. map.geo.admin.ch. ↩
  6. Terrain and reference points, queried 11 August 2026 through the federal profile service and the swisstopo gazetteer, each point checked individually against the commune and game reserve layers. Profiles on 400 m radials from the Cabane Rambert: the flattest 25 m segments on the reserve-free side are 0.2 degrees at 197 m on bearing 330 (2'562 m), 0.6 degrees at 183 m on bearing 150 (2'475 m) and 0.8 degrees at 163 m due south (2'508 m); several flatter samples immediately north and east of the hut returned inside the reserve when queried. Reference points with distance from the Grand Muveran summit: Cabane Rambert CAS 0.99 km, 2'584.0 m, Leytron VS, outside both reserves; Pont de Nant 2.12 km, 1'235.3 m, Bex VD, inside the partial part of object 28; Ovronnaz 5.54 km, 1'288.4 m, Leytron VS, outside; Cabane de la Tourche 5.58 km, 2'188.1 m, Lavey-Morcles VD, outside; Refuge Giacomini 6.31 km, 1'892.9 m, Bex VD, inside object 28 integral; Anzeinde 6.44 km, 1'881.8 m, Bex VD, inside object 28 integral; Derborence 8.23 km, 1'494.9 m, Conthey VS, inside object 38 integral. Check hut opening dates and book before you travel. sac-cas.ch. ↩
  7. Règlement de police de la Commune de Bex, adopté par la Municipalité le 8 avril 2019 et par le Conseil communal le 15 mai 2019, read by optical character recognition. Art. 23 "Camping, caravaning et motor-home": "Sauf autorisation exceptionnelle de la municipalité, il est interdit de camper sur le domaine public. En cas d'autorisation, la municipalité fixe le montant de la taxe. Sur le domaine privé, le camping occasionnel n'est permis qu'avec l'accord du propriétaire, du locataire, du fermier ou du possesseur à un autre titre de l'immeuble. L'autorisation de la municipalité ou de l'autorité délégataire est obligatoire pour toute durée excédant quatre jours. L'autorisation peut être refusée notamment lorsque le campeur ne peut bénéficier d'installations sanitaires à proximité. La municipalité est compétente pour adopter un règlement sur le camping et le caravaning." Art. 10 "Contraventions" refers the penalty to the cantonal loi sur les contraventions rather than naming an amount. bex.ch. ↩