Wild camping at the Wichlenmatt

Glarus does not legislate on camping, and the commune legislates by court order

Wild camping at the Wichlenmatt is lawful, and as always when the answer is yes, the work is in proving an absence rather than reading a permission.

Canton Glarus has no camping provision. Four cantonal acts were read in full for this article: the implementing act to the Civil Code, the act on the protection of nature and heritage, the decree protecting the Hinter Klöntal floodplain, and the cantonal fixed-penalty ordinance. Across all four, there is not one occurrence of camping, tent, bivouac, lagern or overnighting.¹

The one that settles it is the Kantonale Ordnungsbussenverordnung: 18'822 characters of tariff catalogue, and no line for camping.A canton that fines by catalogue and has written no camping line has not made camping finable.

That matters more than the silence of a nature-protection act. A fixed-penalty ordinance is a list of the things a canton has decided to charge people for on the spot. If camping were meant to be one of them here, it would be in that list.

Glarus Süd's method: judicial prohibitions, place by place

The commune is not indifferent to the subject. Glarus Süd has run an active response to wild camping for years, but the instrument it uses is not a general reglement. It is the richterliches Verbot, a judicial prohibition under art. 258 of the Civil Procedure Code, posted on communal land at named places, with a fine of up to CHF 2'000 attached.²

The places it has named are the Muttenchopf and the Muttsee-Limmern area, the Oberblegisee, the Panixerpass, Tierfed and the Klöntal. The Wichlenmatt is on none of them. On ground the commune does not own it can recommend and not prohibit, which is why the map of prohibitions is a scatter of specific sites rather than a boundary.

One thing to be honest about: this is a live process. The commune has been reported as preparing a camping regulation, and as of August 2026 no commune-wide instrument has been adopted; the commune's draft building regulation of December 2024 mentions camping only in the ordinary zoning sense of a designated Campingzone. If that changes, this verdict changes with it, and the date at the top of this article is the date it was checked.²

The reserve a kilometre north-west, and the pass five kilometres south-east

Everything federal is empty at the Wichlenmatt itself: no game reserve, no wildlife rest zone, no landscape inventory object, no floodplain, no bog, no mire landscape, no dry grassland, no park. Each query ran alongside a deliberately invalid layer id, which the service answers with HTTP 400 while the real layers answered 200, so the empty results are genuine rather than a broken request.³

But this is a pocket, not a plain. Bisected step by step on a ten-degree sweep, the boundary of the federal game reserve Kärpf lies 1'054 metres to the north-west, and it carries the stricter federal regime, integral protection rules.

"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, the rule inside every federal game reserve. No exception for a tentless bivouac. Fixed penalty CHF 150 under no. 12005 of the Fixed Penalties Ordinance.

And the reserve is not somewhere off to the side. It contains the natural continuation of the walk: the Richetlipass at 1.11 km and the Leglerhütte of the Swiss Alpine Club at 3.07 km are both inside it. So if you sleep at the Wichlenmatt and walk on north-westwards in the morning, you cross into a CHF 150 rule within about a kilometre.⁴

The other trap is at the top of your own valley

The Panixerpass is 5.18 km south-east of the basin, reached from the Wichlenalp at the head of this valley, and it is one of the places Glarus Süd has named in a judicial prohibition. That is the pairing worth carrying out of this article: the same valley head holds a federal reserve boundary about a kilometre one way and a communal court order about five kilometres the other, and the Wichlenmatt sits in the gap between them.²

The nearest cantonal wildlife rest zone is Ärbs, no. 27.00, about 3'000 m to the east, with a protection period running 21 December to 30 June. For a summer night at the basin it is not in play; for a spring ski tour it is, and its season runs unusually late.³

Why the ground here is worth the walk

Most of the spots on this site come with a paragraph explaining that the lawful ground is also the useless ground. The Wichlenmatt is the opposite, and it is the reason the place is worth knowing about at all.⁵

Profiled outward from the pin on radials in every direction, the basin runs at 0.0 to 0.5 degrees within 300 metres, sitting between 2'047 and 2'049 metres. Sampled instead on a 100 metre grid across an 800 metre box, 30 of 81 cells lie within 12 metres of the same altitude. That is not a ledge or a single flat patch. It is a broad, level alp basin, and it is above the treeline.

The practical consequence is that you have a real choice of where to put yourself, which almost never happens. Use it to get well away from the alp buildings and the track rather than to spread out.

Where you are. Wichlenalp sits 0.97 km away at 1'927 m, still outside the reserve. Elm is 6.98 km down the valley at 986 m and is the road head. The Martinsmadhütte of the Swiss Alpine Club is 8.16 km away at 2'003 m and is outside the reserve; the Leglerhütte, 3.07 km, is inside it. The Oberblegisee, one of the judicial-prohibition sites, is 10.35 km to the north-west and a different valley entirely.⁵

How to do it properly

You need nobody's permission, and you should still behave as though you asked. No cantonal rule reaches the Wichlenmatt, the commune's prohibitions name other places, and the federal inventories are empty here. That is the whole verdict.¹²

Do not drift north-west. The Kärpf boundary is 1'054 m away and inside it a tent, or a bivvy bag, is a federal offence at CHF 150 with no exception for sleeping without a tent. If your route continues over the Richetlipass or to the Leglerhütte, both are inside the reserve, so plan to be walking through, not sleeping.³⁴

Do not treat the Panixerpass as the same answer. It is 5.18 km up your own valley and it is on the commune's judicial-prohibition list, with a fine of up to CHF 2'000. The Wichlenmatt being open says nothing about the pass above it.²

Ground rules, and at a place where the law leaves you alone they carry the weight. One night, small, up late and gone early. No fire. Nothing left, including no trace in the grass where a tent stood. Keep clear of the alp buildings and any stock. If you want a roof instead, the Martinsmadhütte is outside the reserve at 2'003 m, and Elm at the road head has the ordinary range of rooms.⁵

If you are working through the Glarus spots, the Fessisee is answered the same way and for the same reason, so the canton's logic travels: no cantonal rule, no fixed-penalty line, and a commune that prohibits by naming places rather than by drawing a boundary.

General rules for wild camping

The law leaves you alone here, so the conduct has to carry it: one night, small, late up and early away, no fire, no trace, and well clear of the alp buildings and the stock.

• 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.

This verdict rests on the absence of a prohibition, which is a statement about the instruments I read and linked. Glarus Süd adds judicial prohibitions site by site and has been reported as preparing a camping regulation, so a place that is open today can be posted tomorrow: check the current position and follow any notice on site, which in this canton is exactly how a prohibition is communicated. Reserve perimeters are redrawn too. The boundary distances are measured against the official federal geodata and are metres, not certainties. 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.

Frequently asked questions

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.

Swiss Guide Wildcamping Checker Color Grading