Wild camping at the Rote Härd
The Rote Härd sits inside the Kiental federal game reserve, where free camping is banned. Only the canton can allow an exception, so a landowner's yes changes nothing. There is genuinely flat, dry ground at 2'572 metres, and that is what catches people here.
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.
Which Rote Härd, and the one rule that decides it
First the disambiguation, because it changes the answer completely. swisstopo carries four places called Rote Härd: one above Zweisimmen at 1084 m, one at Bennwil in Baselland at 618 m, a "Roter Härd" at Breitenbach in Solothurn at 540 m, and one in the Kandertal at 2562 m. Three of those are farmland field names in a valley floor or the Jura, the kind of name that exists on a map and nowhere else. Nobody submits those to a legality checker. Wild camping at the Rote Härd means the fourth one, high above the Kiental, and that is the one answered here.4
And it is answered by federal law alone, which is unusual for this series. Most spots turn on a communal reglement nobody has read. This one turns on a boundary. The pin sits inside eidgenoessisches Jagdbanngebiet no. 3, "Kiental", a federal game reserve of 8'392 hectares covering the Spiggegrund and the Gorneregrund up to the Morgenhorn and Chilchflue ridge.4
The ordinance that governs those reserves is short and blunt about tents.
"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 camping is prohibited. The use of official campsites is reserved. The cantons may grant exceptions.
Three sentences, and the third is the one people misread. The cantons may grant exceptions. Not the landowner, not the alp tenant, not the hut warden. In most of this corpus the answer to "can I sleep here" ends up being "ask whoever owns the ground". Inside a federal game reserve that route does not exist, because the prohibition is federal and the permission is reserved to the canton.
The partial-protection trap
Kiental is registered as a Gebiet mit partiellen Schutzbestimmungen, an area with partial protection provisions, and its official object sheet confirms that the partial regime applies to the whole reserve. It is very tempting to read that as a softer rule, and it is worth spelling out why it is not.4
The partial-protection carve-out exists, but it is in the previous letter. Lit. d bans carrying, keeping and using weapons and traps, and then says the cantons may grant exceptions for people living inside the reserve and for areas with partial protection. Lit. e, the camping ban, carries no such qualifier. The French and Italian versions are built the same way: les zones partiellement protégées and zone parzialmente protette both appear in lit. d and in neither case in lit. e. Partial protection is about guns, not tents.1
What it actually costs, and the number people get wrong
This is where most write-ups about game reserves go off the rails, so here is the chain in full.
The ordinance itself carries no penalty. Breaches run through art. 18 of the Federal Hunting Act, which makes contraventions of the protective provisions punishable. Art. 18 para. 1 sets a ceiling of CHF 20'000 in ordinary proceedings, and that ceiling is what gets quoted at people, usually as proof that a night in a tent is a catastrophic idea.2
It is not what a camper pays. The Confederation wrote the tariff out itself: annex 2 no. 12005 of the Fixed Penalties Ordinance sets CHF 150 for "Freies Zelten oder Campieren in eidgenoessischen Jagdbanngebieten", free camping in federal game reserves, and cites the Hunting Act together with art. 5 para. 1 lit. e VEJ. That is a fixed penalty, written on the spot, no proceedings.3
Two things follow, and they point in opposite directions. The good news is that CHF 150 is the realistic exposure, not CHF 20'000. The less good news is that the same tariff line is the Confederation's own confirmation that the Hunting Act really does reach a tent. There is no clever argument that a bivouac is not "Campieren" here, because the federal fixed-penalty schedule already answered it.
Worth adding that the reserve exists for a concrete reason rather than as bureaucratic decoration. The Kiental object sheet names the protection of Rauhfusshühner, grouse, as of particular importance. Those are ground-nesting birds that flush at close range and lose body heat every time it happens. A tent on their ground at dusk is the specific thing the reserve is written against.4
Why this spot in particular catches people
Plenty of the bans in this series apply to ground nobody would sleep on anyway. This one does not, and that is exactly why it is worth an article.
Sampling the federal elevation model on a 25 metre grid around the pin gives the picture. The Rote Härd point itself sits at 29.9 degrees, steep enough to rule out. But 79 metres away the slope is 4.1 degrees, at 2572 metres, and there is a second patch at the same angle 112 metres out. That is flat, dry, well above the treeline, with a view down the Kiental. If you were walking the ridge with a bivvy bag looking for somewhere to stop, this is where you would stop.5
The rest of the federal map is clean, which makes it easy to think you are fine. Queried at the pin, the wildlife rest zone inventory comes back empty, so does the BLN landscape inventory, and so do the floodplain, bog, mire and dry-grassland inventories. Every one of those queries ran alongside a deliberately invalid layer id, which the service answers with HTTP 400, so an empty result is a real "outside" and not a broken request.5
Only one layer returns anything at all, and it is the one that decides the article. That asymmetry is the trap in one sentence: the map looks permissive right up until you check the reserve.
The 286 metres that make it worse
The natural response to "you are in a game reserve" is to walk out of it. Measured against the actual polygon, the reserve edge is 286 metres away on a bearing of 117 degrees, roughly east-southeast, and the ground just beyond it is still open alpine terrain at 2600 metres. Ten minutes of walking, and the federal ban stops applying.5
Then the communal one starts. The boundary there is also a commune boundary, and on the far side you are in Lauterbrunnen. Its Camping-Reglement, in force since 1 January 2025, bans camping outside official campsites across the entire municipality, tents and vans alike, with fines up to CHF 5'000. You would be stepping out of a CHF 150 federal offence into a CHF 5'000 communal one.7
The one honest nuance in that direction: the Lauterbrunnen reglement exempts occasional camping on private land for private purposes, so a landowner's personal yes puts you inside its own carve-out. That is a real route, and it is covered properly in the Lauterbrunnen report. It is not something you can arrange at 2600 metres at seven in the evening.
As for the commune the pin actually sits in, Reichenbach im Kandertal publishes no camping or police reglement online that I could find, and this article flags that as a limit rather than pretending it is a finding. It changes nothing here: the federal ban applies whatever the commune does or does not say.
Where you can actually sleep
The verdict is a clean no, so the useful part is the alternatives, and around the Rote Härd they are genuinely good.
The Rotstockhütte is the closest bed, about 2.1 km east-southeast on the Sefinental side, right on the classic crossing between Griesalp and Mürren. The Gspaltenhornhütte of the Swiss Alpine Club sits about 4.7 km south, high above the Kiental, and is the natural stop if you are on the Kiental side of the ridge. Both are on the walking route rather than a detour from it.8
Griesalp, about 4 km west-southwest, is the valley base for all of this, reachable by the famously steep postbus from Reichenbach, with beds and food and the start of the Sefinafurgga crossing. If the plan was a two-day traverse, sleeping there and walking over in one push is the version that works.8
If you genuinely need an exception, there is exactly one door. Art. 5 para. 1 lit. e VEJ reserves exceptions to the canton, which for this reserve means the wildlife service of canton Bern, not the commune and not the landowner. That route exists for research, film work and similar, not for a night out, and nobody should read it as a way to arrange a bivouac. For a genuine emergency the calculation is different and always has been: an unplanned bivouac forced by weather, injury or darkness is not the same thing as a planned camp, and no ranger treats it as one.
And if the Rote Härd you meant was one of the other three, the answer changes but not in your favour. The Zweisimmen one at 1084 m and the two Jura ones at 618 m and 540 m are all well below the treeline on farmed ground, which is this site's standing ceiling of "not recommended" unless a named owner permits that exact field. None of them is a place you would want to sleep anyway.4
For the same question answered nearby: Hagelseewli sits in the neighbouring Schwarzhorn reserve and hits the identical partial-protection trap, Oeschinensee covers the next valley west over in Kandersteg, and Lauterbrunnen is the commune on the other side of that 286 metre boundary.
General rules for wild camping
None of this applies at the Rote Härd itself, because the answer there is no. It applies wherever you do end up, and inside grouse country it matters more than the tidiness of your pitch.
- 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.
Federal reserve boundaries are revised periodically and communal reglements change, so check the current version before relying on any of this, and follow instructions on site. A genuine emergency bivouac in distress is a separate question from a planned camp, and the terrain figures in this article describe the ground, they are not a safety assessment of your route. 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 Rote Härd?
What is the fine for camping in a federal game reserve?
Kiental has only partial protection. Does that soften the camping ban?
Can I just walk out of the reserve and camp there?
Where can I sleep near the Rote Härd?
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
- Ordinance of 30 September 1991 on the Federal Game Reserves (VEJ, SR 922.31), consolidated version in force from 1 February 2025, art. 5 "Artenschutz". Para. 1 lit. e: "Das freie Zelten und Campieren ist verboten. Vorbehalten bleibt die Benutzung offizieller Zeltplätze. Die Kantone können Ausnahmen bewilligen." Para. 1 lit. d, for contrast, bans carrying, keeping and using weapons and traps and then provides: "Die Kantone können für Personen, die innerhalb des Banngebiets wohnen und für Gebiete mit partiellem Schutz, Ausnahmen gestatten." The partial-protection reservation therefore attaches to the weapons rule and not to the camping rule, and the same structure appears in the other language versions: lit. d "Les cantons peuvent accorder des dérogations aux personnes habitant à l'intérieur du district franc et pour les zones partiellement protégées" and "I Cantoni possono consentire eccezioni per persone che abitano all'interno della bandita e per zone parzialmente protette", against lit. e "il est interdit de camper librement" and "è vietato piantare tende o campeggiare", neither of which mentions partial protection. fedlex.admin.ch. ↩
- Federal Act of 20 June 1986 on Hunting and the Protection of Wild Mammals and Birds (JSG, SR 922.0), art. 18 (contraventions). Para. 1 makes breaches of the protective provisions punishable, with a ceiling of CHF 20'000 in ordinary proceedings, and para. 3 covers negligence. This is the penal basis behind the VEJ prohibitions, which carry no sanction of their own. The CHF 20'000 figure is a maximum in ordinary proceedings and is not the amount a camper is charged; that is fixed by the Fixed Penalties Ordinance, see the next note. fedlex.admin.ch. ↩
- Fixed Penalties Ordinance of 16 January 2019 (OBV, SR 314.11), annex 2 no. 12005, which tariffs "Freies Zelten oder Campieren in eidgenoessischen Jagdbanngebieten" at CHF 150 and cites art. 18 para. 1 lit. e together with para. 3 JSG and art. 5 para. 1 lit. e VEJ. This is the amount actually written out for camping in a federal game reserve, and the citation chain in the annex is also the Confederation's own statement that the Hunting Act reaches a tent. fedlex.admin.ch. ↩
- Federal inventory of game reserves, object sheet no. 3 "Kiental" (canton Bern), 2023 revision, together with the swisstopo gazetteer. The object sheet describes the reserve as lying in a side valley of the Kandertal, comprising the Spiggegrund and Gorneregrund up to the ridge of the Morgenhorn and the Chilchflue and reaching down the valley towards Reichenbach im Kandertal; its objective is the conservation of the area as a varied habitat for wild mammals and birds, with the protection of grouse (Rauhfusshühner) named as of particular importance; and under "Besondere Massnahmen" it states that the partial protection provisions apply to the whole area. The identify query returns object no. 3, 8'392.1 ha, type "Gebiet mit partiellen Schutzbestimmungen". On the name: the swisstopo gazetteer lists four entries, "Rote Härd" at Zweisimmen BE (1083.7 m), at Reichenbach im Kandertal BE (2561.6 m), at Bennwil BL (617.9 m) and "Roter Härd" at Breitenbach SO (539.9 m); heights via the federal height service. geo.admin.ch. ↩
- Official federal geodata and elevation model, queried 9 August 2026. Pin at LV95 2'628'816 / 1'156'048 (WGS84 46.55510 / 7.81440), terrain height 2561.6 m via the federal height service, commune of Reichenbach im Kandertal. Identify returns federal game reserve no. 3 "Kiental" at the pin and comes back empty for wildlife rest zones, BLN, floodplains, raised bogs, fens, mire landscapes and dry grasslands; every query ran alongside a deliberately invalid layer id, which this service answers with HTTP 400, because a wrong layer id is otherwise indistinguishable from an empty answer. Distance to the reserve polygon edge, measured segment by segment against the returned geometry, is 286 m on a bearing of 117 degrees; probes at 300, 400, 600 and 900 m along that bearing return no reserve, no wildlife rest zone, and the commune of Lauterbrunnen. Terrain from the federal profile service on a 25 m grid over an 800 m box: 29.9 degrees at the pin, and campable ground of 4.1 degrees at 2571.8 m only 79 m away with a second patch of 4.1 degrees at 112 m. Reference points: Sefinafurgga 2.6 km south, Rotstockhütte 2.1 km east-southeast, Gspaltenhornhütte 4.7 km south, Griesalp 4.1 km west-southwest. map.geo.admin.ch. ↩
- Ordinance of 30 September 1991 on the Federal Game Reserves (VEJ, SR 922.31), art. 5 para. 1 lit. e, third sentence: "Die Kantone können Ausnahmen bewilligen." The power to permit an exception to the camping prohibition lies with the canton, which for this reserve means the competent wildlife authority of canton Bern. It does not lie with the commune, the landowner, the alp tenant or a hut warden, which is what separates a federal game reserve from the consent routes that decide most other spots in this series. fedlex.admin.ch. ↩
- Camping regulation of the commune of Lauterbrunnen, in force since 1 January 2025, which prohibits camping outside official campsites across the whole municipal territory, tents and motorhomes alike, with fines of up to CHF 5'000, while exempting occasional camping on private land for private purposes with the landowner's consent. This is the regime on the far side of the reserve boundary, 286 m east-southeast of the pin, and the reason that leaving the game reserve on that bearing increases rather than reduces the exposure. The full treatment of the commune, including the separate 1960 decree for the back valley nature reserve and its exception for bivouacs on genuine high tours, is in this site's Lauterbrunnen report. lauterbrunnen.swiss. ↩
- The overnight alternatives. The Rotstockhütte lies on the Sefinental side about 2.1 km east-southeast of the pin at LV95 2'630'654 / 1'154'952, on the walking route between Griesalp and Mürren. The Gspaltenhornhütte of the Swiss Alpine Club lies about 4.7 km south at LV95 2'628'520 / 1'151'334, above the Kiental. Griesalp, about 4.1 km west-southwest at LV95 2'624'845 / 1'155'219, is the valley base for the whole area, reached by the postbus from Reichenbach im Kandertal and the usual start of the Sefinafurgga crossing. Distances and bearings computed from the swisstopo gazetteer coordinates for each. Check opening dates and book before you go; these are seasonal mountain huts, not a fallback you can rely on turning up to. sac-cas.ch. ↩