Wild camping at the Schottensee: lawful, by 72 metres

One line, two lakes, two answers

Start with the name, because there are four of them. The federal gazetteer holds four lakes called Schottensee, all real and all alpine: this one in Mels at 2'332 m, and three in Graubünden, at Zernez (2'376 m), Klosters (2'470 m) and Fideris (2'230 m). Altitude does not tell them apart. What does is that only this one sits on a marked trail, the Pizol five-lake walk, which is why it is the one people ask about. If you meant one of the Graubünden three, this article is not about your lake.⁶

Now the boundary. The federal game reserve Graue Hörner, object number 15, is one of the reserves where free camping is not a local matter at all: it is federal, and no landowner's permission helps. Its edge runs 72 m from the centre of the Schottensee.¹

Seventy-two metres from a lake centre is close enough that the shore is the real question, so the shoreline was tested point by point against the official reserve polygon:

• Schottensee: all 56 published shoreline points lie outside the reserve. At the closest approach the boundary passes 5 m from the water.
• Wildsee: all 60 of its shoreline points lie inside it. That lake is 639 m away on the same path.

So the five-lake trail crosses a federal line between two of its lakes, and there is nothing on the ground to tell you.¹

What being inside would cost

This is the one number worth memorising on this walk. Free camping inside a federal game reserve is prohibited by art. 5 para. 1 lit. e of the game reserve ordinance, and the Confederation itself tariffs it: annex 2, item 12005 of the fixed-penalty ordinance prices "Freies Zelten oder Campieren in eidgenössischen Jagdbanngebieten" at CHF 150, citing art. 18 of the Hunting Act together with that article. The CHF 20'000 figure that circulates online is the statutory ceiling in ordinary proceedings, not what a camper is handed.²

The zone that does cover the lake says nothing about tents

The cadastre puts the Schottensee inside a communal Lebensraum Kerngebiet, and the Mels protection ordinance's own annex describes that core habitat as the Jagdbanngebiet area. The communal polygon is simply drawn a little wider than the federal one, which is why the lake carries the communal zone and not the federal reserve.⁵⁴

That distinction matters only because the two say different things. Art. 15, the core habitat article, forbids buildings, agricultural intensification, road building, transport installations, extraction, tourist events, moto-cross and mountain biking off marked roads. There is no tent in the list. The two articles in the same ordinance that do name tents are art. 7, for nature reserves, and art. 16bis, for the Chapfensee down by the village. Neither reaches here: no nature reserve exists anywhere on the 9.76 km² parcel that holds this lake.⁴⁵

The rest of the file, level by level

Federal, apart from the reserve. Identify returns nothing else at the lake: no wildlife rest zone, no BLN landscape, no bog, no floodplain, no dry meadow, no park of national importance, no forest reserve. The nearest wildlife rest zone, Hinterwald Vermii, is 1'574 m away. The one thing the pin is inside is the UNESCO Tectonic Arena Sardona, which is a world heritage designation for the geology and not a rule about sleeping. Every query ran with an invalid-layer control that errors rather than answering empty, and a positive control point inside a known reserve returns it.¹

The canton has nothing to apply. St. Gallen never legislated on camping. Its Übertretungsstrafgesetz, where a cantonal fixed penalty would have to live, contains no camping term at all, and its police act mentions overnight guests only in the hotel registration article. The building act names campsites as a zoning category and exempts mobile structures from a permit for up to three months.³

And Mels is the interesting one. Three neighbouring communes in this canton have no police regulation at all. Mels does have one, so it was read in full: 16'304 characters, and not a single occurrence of campieren, zelten, biwak, lagern, übernachten, wohnwagen or camping, against healthy control counts. A police regulation that exists and stays silent is a stronger result than one that does not exist.⁴

The rest of the 50 published Mels acts were swept the same way. The only other camping words in the corpus are index entries in the Baureglement pointing at the zoning articles for campsites, and the visitor's tax on campsite pitches.⁴

Where to pitch, and how to stay on the right side

Go north-west, not south-east. The reserve lies on the Wildsee side. The pitch this article publishes is at LV95 2'748'569 / 1'204'903, 2'338.8 m, which measures 0.9 degrees, sits 302 m north-north-west of the lake centre, keeps 32 m back from the water and is 297 m from the reserve boundary. It was chosen for that margin rather than for the flattest reading on the model.⁷

The rule of thumb, if you are navigating by eye rather than by coordinate: the Wildsee is the reserve. Walk away from it before you stop, keep the Schottensee between you and the Wildsee, and you are not going to be near the line.

What is actually up here

You are at 2'332 m, above the tree line, on a lake that is one of the most walked day objectives in eastern Switzerland. There is one registered building 71 m from the water, non-residential, addressed Graue Hörner in Schwendi im Weisstannental, and the marked trail passes 101 m away. No lift stops here and there is no inn on the bank. That makes this a busy place by day and an empty one after the last walkers go down, which is the practical shape of a night here.⁷

The other side of that: on a trail this well used, one visible tent is the one people photograph. Pitch late, well off the path, and be gone early. Nothing in this article survives a summer of tents on the shoreline.

Fire, water and the season

No fire. Nothing at this point forbids one, but the commune's fire rules are written for its protection zones and you are 5 m from a federal reserve at the nearest point. The Gafarrabach runs 124 m from the lake; treat what you take and wash well away from both it and the lake. In winter the reserve question is joined by the wildlife rest zone 1'574 m off, and this is in any case a summer answer.¹⁷

General rules for wild camping

You are on the right side of a federal line that nobody has marked, on one of the busiest hiking trails in the canton. Both facts argue for the same behaviour:

• 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

Everything here is a journalistic assessment as of September 2026, from the sources linked below, and it is not legal advice.

Lawful here is a verified absence outside a boundary, not a permission. It holds as long as Mels and the canton leave it alone, and it holds only outside the reserve.

The boundary test used the official federal reserve polygon and the openly published lake outline. That locates the line to within a few metres, which is enough to say the whole shoreline is outside it and not enough to plan a pitch that is metres from the edge. The published pitch keeps 297 m of margin for exactly that reason.

There are four Swiss lakes called Schottensee. This verdict describes the one in Mels at 2'332 m, on the Pizol trail.

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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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