Wild camping on the Vättnerberg
The request behind this article arrived as bare coordinates. They land on a terrace where no rule forbids a tent. The flat ground up there is mown hay, 199 metres from a farm, and the Ortsgemeinde Vättis allows camping with a permit at two other places.
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 the coordinates resolve to
The request was a pin rather than a name, which is the harder thing to answer well and the better thing to ask. LV95 2'754'206 / 1'200'708.75 is WGS84 46.939558, 9.464092, terrain surface 1'627.6 m, in the commune of Pfäfers, canton St. Gallen, on parcel 228.3
On the ground that is the terrace under the Muntaluna, north of Vättis and above the Mapraggsee. The Vättnerberg is 947 m off, the Muntaluna summit 1'622 m, the Nase ridge 528 m, the Mapraggsee 816 m and the village of Vättis 2'033 m. The access road across the terrace is the Findels-Vättnerberg, 225 m away, and a marked path passes at 69 m.3
The law here is open, and it is worth seeing why
Federal law is empty at this point. No game reserve, no wildlife rest zone, no landscape inventory object, no bog, no floodplain, no dry meadow, no park, no forest reserve, with the invalid-layer control erroring rather than answering empty.1
Pfäfers has no police regulation at all, so the communal instrument is its Schutzverordnung, and the cadastre says which part of it covers the point: a Lebensraum Kerngebiet, alongside an agricultural zone, a hazard note and a noise sensitivity class.23
The ordinance's article 17 governs those core habitat zones, and it is a long list of prohibitions that a walker with a tent simply is not on. It bars new buildings and installations, intensification of farming, building or widening roads, transport installations, quarrying and deposits, tourist or sporting events unless shown to be harmless, moto-cross, mountain biking off the marked roads, flying model aircraft, and launching paragliders or hang-gliders. There is no camping, tent, bivouac or overnight clause in it.2
The two bans that exist, and where they are
Pfäfers does prohibit camping, twice, and it is worth being precise about where, because "the same ordinance" is not "the same rule":
- Article 8, for the Schutzgebiete, bans "die Nutzung zu Erholungs- und Freizeitzwecken, wie Lagern, Zelten, Campieren und das Anfachen von Feuer, ausser an den bezeichneten Stellen", and separately forbids leaving the marked paths. The nearest nature reserve, a dry-meadow one, lies 648 m from the point and does not cover it.12
- Article 18 adds a camping ban for one core zone only, the Calfeisental. That valley is 9'083 m away.23
So the legal position at this pin is open. That is the same conclusion this file reached for a point higher up on the same terrace, in the same core habitat zone, which is graded lawful. The difference between the two answers is not the law.4
The ground decides it, and the ordinance describes the ground
You are below the tree line. The point sits at 1'627.6 m with the forest edge 87 m away, and the land-use zone covering it is the Landwirtschaftszone. That is worked country, not open alpine ground, and the usual reasoning that keeps a high bivouac harmless does not carry down here.3
And the ordinance itself says what this terrace is. Its register of the core habitat zones describes this one as:
"Terrasse am Muntaluna nördlich von Vättis mit Mähwiesen und prachtvollen Wildheuwiesen, Reichtum an alpiner Flora, höchste noch in traditioneller Art genutzte Kulturlandschaft des Kantons St. Gallen."Schutzverordnung der Gemeinde Pfäfers, register of the Lebensräume bedrohter Arten, entry LRK 1 "Nord: Vättnerberg". In English: terrace at the Muntaluna north of Vättis with hay meadows and magnificent wild-hay meadows, rich in alpine flora, the highest cultural landscape in canton St. Gallen still worked in the traditional way.
Read that as a warning about the flat spots. The terrain here is mostly steep: over an 800 metre box the median slope is 31.7 degrees and only 6% of samples come in under 10. The genuinely flat ground is a 0.2 degree patch 90 m to the south-west, with more at 141 and 266 m. Those are the meadow. A tent on standing hay is not a victimless choice, it is somebody's crop flattened, and on wild-hay ground that is cut by hand it is worse than it looks.3
And it is not remote. Nearest building 199 m, marked path 69 m, the terrace road 225 m. Groundwater protection zones start close by too, S3 at 207 m, S2 at 237 m and S1 at 251 m; none of them covers the point, but S1 in particular is a zone where you do not want to discover you had wandered.3
What is actually possible here
The landowner has already answered this question in public, and the answer is yes with conditions. The Ortsgemeinde Vättis, which holds the land above the village, publishes a page on private camping stating that "Privatpersonen dürfen in Vättis mit einer Genehmigung campieren", at the Hüttenwiese or the Pardätsch parking area, and asks people to observe the signs on site. It is signed by the Ortsverwaltungsrat Vättis.4
That is unusually helpful, and it also settles the pin. The owner offers camping with a permit at two named places, and this point is neither of them. Asking is therefore not a formality here, it is the whole route: Ortsgemeinde Vättis, Langgasse 29, 7315 Vättis.4
If you want the high ground instead
The honest alternative is to go up rather than sideways. Above the tree line on this same terrace the picture changes: the meadows stop, the ground is open alpine, and the objections in this report fall away one by one while the legal position stays exactly as open as it is here. That is a different point with its own answer, and it is worth checking that point's coordinates rather than assuming the terrace behaves the same all the way up.4
Whatever you do on this terrace, the rules that matter are the farmer's, not the state's. Stay off standing grass, do not cross fenced pasture, leave gates as you find them, no fire, and camp nowhere you would not want to be found in the morning by the person who cuts that hay. This is the highest traditionally worked landscape in the canton and it exists because it is still being worked.2
General rules for wild camping
Nothing here is illegal, which puts the whole weight on how you behave. On hay ground with a farm in sight that is a higher bar than usual, not a lower one:
- 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.
Not allowed here is not a statement that a rule forbids it. No federal layer, no communal police regulation and no clause of the protection article covering this point prohibits camping, and the ordinance's two camping bans lie 648 m and 9'083 m away.
The verdict rests on the ground: below the tree line, in an agricultural zone the ordinance itself describes as hay and wild-hay meadow, with a building 199 m away, and on the fact that the landowner publishes two designated places for camping with a permit and this point is not one of them.
The request arrived as coordinates rather than a name. Everything above describes the exact point LV95 2'754'206 / 1'200'708.75 and nothing else; a point a few hundred metres higher on the same terrace can and does read differently.
Frequently asked questions
Is wild camping allowed at these coordinates?
Doesn't the Pfäfers protection ordinance ban camping?
Can I get permission?
Why is a higher point on the same terrace treated as lawful?
Where is the flat ground?
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, queried 7 September 2026 at LV95 2'754'206 / 1'200'708.75, terrain surface 1'627.6 m, commune Pfäfers. Identify returns empty results for federal game reserves, wildlife rest zones, parks of national importance, the BLN inventory, floodplains, raised and lowland bogs, mire landscapes, amphibian sites, Ramsar and Emerald sites, forest reserves and dry grasslands. The queries ran alongside a deliberately invalid layer id returning HTTP 400 while real layers return HTTP 200. The federal reframe service converts the submitted coordinates to WGS84 46.939558, 9.464092. map.geo.admin.ch. ↩
- Schutzverordnung der Politischen Gemeinde Pfäfers. Art. 17 "Lebensräume a) Kerngebiete" provides that the core habitat zones are protected objects under art. 98 para. 1 let. d of the building act and are to be preserved in their untouched state, and prohibits in particular the erection of buildings and installations, intensification of existing agricultural use, the building or extension of roads, the erection of transport installations, extraction projects for stone, gravel, sand, clay and peat together with fills and deposits, tourist or sporting events unless it is shown that no damaging effects are connected with them, moto-cross and trial, mountain biking away from the marked roads, the flying of model aircraft, and taking off with paragliders or hang-gliders; para. 2 preserves current agricultural and forestry use as well as hunting and fishing and applies the protection goals of the landscape protection areas under art. 15. It contains no provision on camping, tents, bivouac or overnight stays. Art. 8 prohibits in the Schutzgebiete "die Nutzung zu Erholungs- und Freizeitzwecken, wie Lagern, Zelten, Campieren und das Anfachen von Feuer, ausser an den bezeichneten Stellen" and "das Verlassen der markierten Wege". Art. 18 "b) Kerngebiet Calfeisental (LRK 4)" applies art. 17 and additionally prohibits "die Nutzung zu Erholungs- und Ferienzwecken, wie zelten, campieren und das Anfachen von Feuer, ausser an den dazu bezeichneten Stellen". The ordinance's register "Verzeichnis der Lebensräume bedrohter Arten (Kerngebiete)" lists four: LRK 1 "Nord: Vättnerberg", described as "Terrasse am Muntaluna nördlich von Vättis mit Mähwiesen und prachtvollen Wildheuwiesen, Reichtum an alpiner Flora, höchste noch in traditioneller Art genutzte Kulturlandschaft des Kantons St. Gallen"; LRK 2 "Süd: Simel"; LRK 3 "Ost: St. Margrethenberg-Vättis"; LRK 4 "Calfeisental". Control counts on the document: 67 for "Art.", 35 for "Schutzgebiet", 7 for "Gemeinderat". Pfäfers publishes no Polizeireglement. geoportal.ch. ↩
- Cadastre of public-law restrictions, canton St. Gallen, extract with geometry for parcel 228, EGRID CH349748777894, 1'360'765 m2, commune Pfäfers, retrieved 7 September 2026. The extract carries 37 restrictions and the geometry-type histogram is 37 surfaces out of 37, so no restriction is recorded as a line or point that a surface test would miss. Covering the point: "Lebensraum Kerngebiet LR K" (type code 91110), "BauG Landwirtschaftszone", "BauG Naturgefahren kommunaler Hinweis" and noise sensitivity class III. Not covering the point, by distance: "Hinweis Wald" 87 m, potential water-body space 129 m, groundwater protection zone S3 207 m, S2 237 m and S1 251 m, and the nearest nature reserve, "Naturschutzgebiet trocken B (Magerweide) NTB", 648 m. The core habitat geometry is a single polygon of 2'089 vertices covering 38.98 km2 between E 2'747'485 and 2'755'165 and N 1'197'540 and 1'205'878. Surroundings measured with the identify tolerance calibrated to one pixel per metre and validated against an urban control point: nearest registered building 199 m, marked hiking path 69 m, the road "Findels-Vättnerberg" 225 m, no railway within 800 m. Terrain on the federal 2 metre model over an 800 by 800 m box sampled at 25 m: 15.2 degrees at the point, median slope 31.7 degrees, elevations 1'075.5 to 1'761.3 m, 61 of 961 samples under 10 degrees; flattest candidates 0.2 degrees at 1'625.0 m 90 m on bearing 214, 1.1 degrees at 1'622.7 m 141 m on bearing 225, and 1.4 degrees at 1'633.6 m and 1'634.8 m at 266 and 270 m. Gazetteer distances from the point: Vättnerberg 947 m, Muntaluna summit 1'622 m, Nase ridge 528 m, Mapraggsee 816 m, Mapraggsee cable car 640 m, Vättis 2'033 m, Calfeisental 9'083 m. oereb.geo.sg.ch. ↩
- Ortsgemeinde Vättis, the corporation holding land above the village, page "Privates Campieren", checked 7 September 2026: "Privatpersonen dürfen in Vättis mit einer Genehmigung campieren", naming as the places the "Hüttenwiese oder Parkplatz Pardätsch" and closing "Bitte beachten Sie die Hinweisschilder dazu", signed "Der Ortsverwaltungsrat Vättis". The same site carries sections on forestry, alpine farming and properties. Postal address as published: Ortsgemeinde Vättis, Langgasse 29, 7315 Vättis; the contact page serves its email address only through JavaScript and gives no telephone number. ortsgemeinde-vaettis.ch. ↩