Wild camping on the Silberen: the best flat ground for miles is inside a federal reserve
The summit plateau measures 2.8 degrees, which on a karst mountain at 2'318 metres is an invitation. It is also entirely inside a federal game reserve where free tenting is prohibited outright, and the nearest ground outside the boundary runs at 28 degrees. That combination is the whole story 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.
One federal sentence, and it names tents
Most Swiss camping questions end up in a commune's building regulation. This one does not get that far, because a federal instrument reaches the ground first and settles it.
The summit lies inside federal game reserve no. 9, "Silbern-Jägern-Bödmerenwald", one of the reserves listed in the annex to the federal ordinance on game reserves. The relevant provision is short:
"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 para. 1 lit. e.
Read what is not there. There is no "except in areas with partial protection", no "outside marked paths", no seasonal window. The prohibition applies across the reserve. And this is not an oversight: the neighbouring letter d, which deals with carrying weapons, does expressly except areas with only partial protection. When a drafter writes a carve-out into one letter and leaves it out of the next, the omission is a decision.2
Note the last sentence too, because it closes the usual escape route. "Die Kantone können Ausnahmen bewilligen." The canton can permit an exception. Not the landowner, not the alp tenant, not the hut warden. On most Swiss ground a friendly word with whoever owns the pasture is a real legal route. Inside a federal game reserve it is not, and being told "sure, go ahead" by someone on the mountain does not make it lawful.2
What it costs. The federal fixed-penalty ordinance prices this directly: "Freies Zelten oder Campieren in eidgenössischen Jagdbanngebieten", 150 francs, at annex 2 no. 12005, citing the hunting act's art. 18 para. 1 lit. e together with para. 3. It is a fixed penalty, so it can be handed over on the spot without proceedings.3
You will see CHF 20'000 quoted for this. Ignore it. That figure is the ceiling the hunting act allows an ordinary criminal proceeding to reach across all its offences. What a camper in a reserve actually faces is the tariffed 150 francs. We published the higher number ourselves once, corpus-wide, and corrected it in July 2026.3
Everything below the federal level is silent, and it does not matter here. Canton Schwyz prohibits camping only inside the six plant reserves listed in the annex to its landscape-protection act and its eleven cantonal nature reserves, none of which is this mountain. The Muotathal building regulation, approved 2 July 2013, returns zero for Zelt, Campier, Camping and Biwak on a scan whose control terms match normally. Both are worth stating precisely because they are the checks people run, and here they would lead you to the wrong answer.5
Where the reserve ends, and why that does not help much
The obvious next question is how far you have to walk. So I walked it, on the map: twenty-four bearings out from the summit in 100 metre steps, refined to 25 metres, asking the federal reserve layer at every point whether it was still inside.6
The nearest way out is 675 metres on bearing 75, east-northeast, crossing the boundary at LV95 2'711'769 / 1'205'802, 2'180.6 m. Northeast and east are similar, 725 to 825 metres. South and southwest you are still inside the reserve well beyond a kilometre.6
And here is the part that decides it. The summit plateau, inside the reserve, runs at 2.8 degrees. The first point outside the reserve, 675 metres away, runs at 28.3 degrees. The boundary is not separating good ground from equally good ground. It is drawn around the good ground.6
So this article does not publish a pitch outside the boundary, and that is on purpose. A radial scan tells you where a line is. It does not survey what is on the far side of it, and recommending ground I have only sampled at one point would be exactly the kind of confident guess these reports exist to avoid. If you want a night out here, the honest answer is to plan a different mountain rather than a different bearing.
The map facts. Silberen, WGS84 via LV95 2'711'117 / 1'205'627, 2'318.5 m, commune of Muotathal, canton Schwyz, on the karst plateau above the Bödmerenwald. Besides the game reserve, the point carries the landscape inventory object BLN 1601 "Silberen", which binds authorities when they plan and permit and contains no camping provision, so it is not what forbids anything here. No wildlife rest zone, no mire, floodplain, dry meadow, amphibian site or park at the point.14
The boundary point 675 metres out is still in Muotathal and still inside BLN 1601, so crossing it changes the game-reserve question and nothing else.6
What is actually possible here
Day-time access is not the issue. The reserve prohibits free tenting and camping; it does not close the mountain. The Silberen is a well-known karst traverse and walking it is not what any of this is about.2
If you genuinely need an exception, there is exactly one door. The ordinance says the cantons may permit exceptions, so for this reserve that is the canton of Schwyz, through its hunting and wildlife authority, not anyone you will meet on the hill. Expect that to be aimed at research and management rather than at a night out, and expect it to take longer than your weekend.2
The roof option. This is hut country, and inside a federal game reserve a hut is not a compromise, it is the intended way to spend the night up here. Sleeping under a roof takes the whole question off the table.
And if what you want is a lawful night out on Schwyz karst rather than this summit specifically, the corpus has spots in this canton that are not inside a federal reserve and where the answer is a yes rather than a workaround. Start from the wild camping reports and pick one that is graded legal, rather than trying to find the edge of this one.
One last thing worth carrying. The Pragelpass, in this same commune, is inside this same reserve and gets the same answer for the same reason. If you are planning a route across this massif, assume the reserve rather than the exception, and check the boundary rather than the mood on the day.6
General rules for wild camping
They apply everywhere, and on a mountain where the answer is no they matter for a different reason: a federal game reserve exists because the wildlife in it needs the nights undisturbed, which is precisely what a tent on the plateau takes away.
- 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.
The reserve boundary here was mapped by querying the federal inventory layer along twenty-four bearings, which locates the line to about 25 metres but does not survey the ground beyond it; no pitch outside the boundary is recommended for that reason. Reserve perimeters can be revised, and the canton may permit exceptions that this article cannot anticipate. Before every tour, check the current sources yourself, read any sign you find on the ground 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 it. 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
Is wild camping allowed on the Silberen?
What is the fine for camping on the Silberen?
Does a bivvy bag without a tent get around it?
How far do I have to walk to get out of the reserve?
Can the alp or the landowner give me permission?
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
- Official federal geodata and the national height model, queried 23 August 2026 at the Silberen summit, LV95 2'711'117 / 1'205'627, 2'318.5 m, commune Muotathal, canton Schwyz, current-year boundary records only. The point returns federal game reserve no. 9 "Silbern-Jägern-Bödmerenwald" and BLN 1601 "Silberen". The wildlife-rest-zone, national-park and parks, floodplain, raised-bog, fen, moorland, amphibian, dry-meadow and water-bird-reserve layers all return an empty result set. Verified with a positive control at LV95 2'626'000 / 1'154'500, which returns federal game reserve no. 3 Kiental, and an invalid-layer control, which returns HTTP 400 rather than an empty set. map.geo.admin.ch. ↩
- Verordnung über die eidgenössischen Jagdbanngebiete (VEJ), SR 922.31, art. 5 para. 1 lit. e: "Das freie Zelten und Campieren ist verboten. Vorbehalten bleibt die Benutzung offizieller Zeltplätze. Die Kantone können Ausnahmen bewilligen." The provision carries no zone qualifier and no bivouac carve-out, in contrast to the neighbouring lit. d on carrying weapons, which expressly excepts "Gebiete mit partiellem Schutz". The closing sentence assigns the power to grant exceptions to the cantons, not to landowners or tenants. Reserve no. 9 "Silbern-Jägern-Bödmerenwald" is listed in the ordinance's annex. fedlex.admin.ch. ↩
- Ordnungsbussenverordnung (OBV), SR 314.11, Anhang 2 Ziff. 12005: "Freies Zelten oder Campieren in eidgenössischen Jagdbanngebieten", 150 Franken, citing Jagdgesetz (JSG), SR 922.0, art. 18 para. 1 lit. e together with para. 3. Being a fixed penalty, it is issued on the spot without ordinary proceedings. The CHF 20'000 figure widely quoted online is the ceiling of art. 18 para. 1 JSG in ordinary criminal proceedings across all its offences and is not what a camper in a reserve faces; Hikebeast corrected its own corpus-wide use of that figure in July 2026. fedlex.admin.ch. ↩
- Bundesinventar der Landschaften und Naturdenkmäler von nationaler Bedeutung, object 1601 "Silberen", returned at the summit point. A BLN listing binds authorities in planning and permitting under the federal nature-protection act; it contains no camping provision and does not sanction an individual camper. It is recorded here so it is not mistaken for the operative prohibition, which is the game reserve. map.geo.admin.ch. ↩
- Cantonal and communal level, both silent and both recorded because they are the checks people run. Canton Schwyz prohibits camping only inside the six plant reserves listed in the annex to its landscape-protection act and its eleven cantonal nature reserves; the Silberen is none of the forty named areas. Baureglement Muotathal, approved 2 July 2013, scores Zelt 0, Campier 0, Camping 0, Biwak 0 on a word-boundary scan whose control terms match normally (verboten 1, untersagt 2, Busse 1). Neither adds to nor subtracts from the federal prohibition. sz.ch. ↩
- Reserve-boundary and terrain scan, 23 August 2026. The federal game reserve layer was queried outward from the summit on 24 bearings in 100 m steps to 5 km, refined to 25 m, with the invalid-layer control returning HTTP 400 on the same run. Nearest point outside the reserve: 675 m on bearing 75 (east-northeast), LV95 2'711'769 / 1'205'802, 2'180.6 m. Next nearest 725 m on bearing 60, 750 m on bearing 45, 825 m on bearings 30 and 90. Slope from a 25 m cross: 2.8 degrees at the summit, 28.3 degrees at the boundary point. The boundary point remains in Muotathal and inside BLN 1601. No pitch beyond the boundary is published, because a radial scan locates the line without surveying the ground past it. map.geo.admin.ch. ↩