Wild camping at the Triftbrücke: nothing in Swiss law forbids it, and you still cannot sleep there

The legal answer, which is the easy half

Wild camping at the Triftbrücke is unusual in this series because the law is clean in every direction and the answer is still no. So take the law first, because it is short, and then the part that actually decides it.

Federal: nothing. No game reserve, no wildlife rest zone, no BLN object, no mire landscape, raised bog, fen or amphibian site, no dry grassland, no forest reserve, no park of national importance. Each of those checked with a deliberately invalid layer alongside, which returns an HTTP error, so an empty answer means real absence rather than a broken request. One layer is not empty and deserves a sentence rather than silence: the pin sits inside object 1204 "Triftgletscher BE", a glacier-forefield floodplain on the register of alpine floodplains that lie outside the federal inventory. Being outside the inventory, it carries no federal protection and no prohibition. It is a description of the ground, and it happens to confirm the terrain reading: what you are standing over is glacier forefield.²

Cantonal: nothing either. Canton Bern has no camping or bivouac ordinance of general application. That is now a checked statement rather than an assumption: the entire Bernese collection of acts in force was pulled and searched, and none of them contains the word Campieren or Biwak in its article text. Bern's one camping instrument is the wildlife protection ordinance, which works area by area through a list of named zones, and it designates none within three kilometres of the Trift.³

Communal: and this is the part that has changed since we last wrote about this valley. Innertkirchen publishes 35 regulations and ordinances, and there is no police regulation and no camping regulation among them. In canton Bern the communal camping ban normally lives in exactly one of those two instruments. Innertkirchen has neither.³

When we answered the Gadenlouwisee, one valley over and in the same commune, we had to stop there and publish no verdict at all, because one document remained unreadable. The commune's own page said it, and still says it:

"Die Einwohnergemeinde Innertkirchen verfügt seit der Gemeindefusion mit Gadmen nach wie vor über zwei Baureglemente. Die Baureglemente sind nicht online abrufbar!"Gemeinde Innertkirchen, page on the Baureglement: since the merger with Gadmen the commune still has two building regulations, and they are not available online.

That notice is now out of date, and the document is readable. Not through the commune, but through the cadastre of public-law restrictions, which lists the legal instruments attaching to a given parcel. The bridge stands on parcel 1045 in the Gadmen land-registry district, and the cadastre names exactly one planning instrument for it: a 71 page document titled "Zusammenführung der Baureglemente Innertkirchen und Gadmen", carrying the approval stamp of the cantonal office for communes and spatial planning dated 4 June 2026. The two building regulations have been merged into one and it is in force.³

And it contains no camping rule. I searched the in-force text for camping, tents, bivouacking, overnighting and staying the night, and the words are simply not in it. The only two places the vocabulary appears at all are a zoning article defining the commercial camping zone down in the valley, and a landscape-protection article for the Gadmen part of the commune that excludes campsites, motorhomes and caravans from certain areas. Neither reaches a person with a tent, and the Trift is in none of the protected areas that article lists. The parcel itself is zoned agricultural and alpine, with no landscape protection, no high-mountain protection and no wildlife protection overlay of any kind.³

So the honest legal conclusion at the Trift is the permissive one: no norm at any level prohibits a considerate single night out here.

And now the part that actually decides it

The Triftbrücke is not a place a person can sleep. It is a pedestrian suspension bridge with a walkway roughly 0.8 metres wide, hung across the gorge above the Triftsee. There is no flat ground on it, obviously, and there is none at either end either: the abutments are rock and steep path, and the gentlest slope anywhere within 400 metres at deck level is about twenty degrees. That is not a pitch. It is a staircase.

The map itself gives this away, once you know to look. The published coordinate for the Triftbrücke returns 1'654.6 metres from the federal height service, and the surface of the Triftsee 400 metres away returns 1'651.6. Those two numbers are almost identical, and the bridge deck is at about 1'739. The reason is simple and worth stating plainly: the pin hangs over the lake, so the terrain model reads the water beneath it. There is about 85 metres of air under that coordinate. Anyone treating it as a location on the ground is treating a point in space as a campsite.¹

The other tell is the absence of any track record. Across 97 published trip reports for this destination there is not one account of anyone bivouacking at the bridge. At genuine bivouac spots that number is never zero, and where a practice exists people write about it, photograph it and describe the flattened grass. Here nobody has, because there is nowhere to do it.¹

If you would rather have a roof, there are two, and they are the right answer for most people. The Windegghütte sits about thirty minutes from the bridge and the Trifthütte beyond it on the far side, both staffed in season. Given the walk in, a hut booking is the sane plan for a first visit here.⁴

Two practical things that change the trip completely. The Triftbahn cable car is out of service until at least the end of August 2026, so instead of a lift plus two hours you should budget three to four hours on foot from the valley. And the bridge has a finite future: the concession for the Trift reservoir was granted by the cantonal parliament on 8 June 2023, one appeal is still pending, no building permit has been filed and nothing is under construction, but the operator states that the suspension bridge will be dismantled during the building phase, replaced by a temporary crossing, and eventually superseded by a path over the dam crown. Check before you go.⁵

One thing this spot does not have: anyone to ask. At the Fälensee or the Seealpsee the useful answer is a name and a phone number, because a specific alp tenant controls the ground. Here there is no identifiable private owner. The Bernese land register is not public, the cadastre never discloses owners, and much of the unproductive high ground in this kind of terrain is ownerless land under the Civil Code, held by the canton and expressly open to common use. So the consent route that carries several of our other articles simply does not exist here, and it does not need to, because nothing prohibits the night in the first place.⁶

Why we took this spot out of the wildcamping collection

Worth being straight about this, because the Triftbrücke is in our guide and until recently it carried a wildcamping verdict.

It carried "legal", with a reason that was accurate about the law and wrong about the place. An internal re-audit in July 2026 pulled it out of the wildcamping collection entirely, along with two other entries, on the grounds that they are not camping spots. That was the right call and this article does not reverse it. A suspension bridge over a gorge should not appear in a list of places to sleep, whatever the statutes say, and the fact that the surrounding law is permissive is exactly the trap: it is what produced a permissive verdict on a bridge in the first place.

This is the clearest example we have of why the legal question comes second. Our first filter on any spot is whether a reasonable person would sleep on that ground at all, and it runs before any statute is opened. A place can be perfectly lawful and completely unusable. The Triftbrücke is both, and if we had only run the legal check it would still be sitting in the collection with a green chip on it.

The related entry that does belong there is the Triftsee, the lake the bridge crosses, whose terraces are the real ground. And one valley to the east, the Gadenlouwisee got a "no clear answer" from us for the single reason that the Gadmen building regulation could not be read. That reason expired on 4 June 2026. We will revisit that article.³

For completeness, the point data: the bridge at WGS84 46.694403 / 8.357384, LV95 2'670'273 / 1'171'876, commune Innertkirchen per the current-year boundaries, parcel 1045, zoned agricultural and alpine. Terrain 1'654.6 metres at the pin, deck about 1'739, lake surface 1'651.6. Every protected-area query run with an invalid-layer control.²

Where you can legally sleep

• The rock terraces above the Triftsee, ten minutes on from the bridge. Open, level, above the tree line, and nothing prohibits a single considerate night.
• Windegghütte, about thirty minutes from the bridge, staffed in season.
• Trifthütte, further in on the far side, the classic base for the Trift basin.
• Campsites and guesthouses in Gadmen, Innertkirchen and Meiringen down in the valley, which is also where you will be starting from while the Triftbahn is out of service.
• Not the bridge, and not either end of it. There is no ground there, and the approach ramps need to stay clear.

General rules for wild camping

This applies wherever you are genuinely allowed to sleep outside, and in this valley you are, just not on the bridge. Carry it to the terraces: it is not legal text, it is decency and common sense, and in a glacier forefield with a hut a few minutes away it is the difference between being welcome and being the reason a rule gets written.

• 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 July 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.

Communal regulations change, and the merged Innertkirchen and Gadmen building regulation was approved only on 4 June 2026, while the commune's own website still carries the older notice saying the regulations are not available online. The Trift reservoir project is live, with one appeal pending, and the operator states the suspension bridge will be dismantled during construction. Before every tour, check the current sources and the cable-car status yourself and follow instructions on site. 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.

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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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