[Guides](/guides/) › Wild camping and bivouac in the Vanoise [Open in the HutScanner map](/app?region=vanoise) # Wild camping and bivouac in the Vanoise Short version: bivouac in the core of the Parc national de la Vanoise is permitted, and the park says so in its own order, but only on designated ground beside certain refuges, only with a booking made with that refuge's guardian, only in a tent you cannot stand up in, only between 19:00 and 08:00, and only for one night at the refuge in question. Wild camping in the ordinary sense is not permitted in the core zone at all. Outside the core, the rules are the communes' business and vary. Last checked: 27 August 2026. The park's bivouac order is a standing instrument rather than a seasonal one, but the refuge list and the booking arrangements change from year to year, so treat the refuge detail as the part most likely to move. ## The instrument The rule is set by **arrete n°2025-007 reglementant le bivouac dans le coeur du Parc national de la Vanoise**, signed by the director of the park's public establishment, Xavier Eudes. It was presented to the park's board on 11 March 2025 and it abrogates the previous bivouac order, n°2019-029 of 12 April 2019. Its legal chain, from the order's own preamble: articles L.331-1 to L.331-28 and R.331-1 to R.331-85 of the Code de l'environnement; decree n°2009-447 of 21 April 2009 adapting the park's delimitation and regulation, article 15; decree n°2015-473 of 27 April 2015 approving the park's charte; and paragraphs IV and V of modality n°34 of the charte's special core-zone regulation, which is the provision on bivouac. The preamble is worth reading for what it concedes. It records bivouac as a practice that can disturb the tranquillity of places and wildlife, trample ecologically sensitive ground, leave waste and create visual nuisance. It also records bivouac as an alternative to refuge accommodation that helps walkers on a multi-day itinerary reach the core zone, and names walkers on a limited budget specifically. The order is the compromise between those two findings. ## The six conditions Article 1 permits bivouac in the core of the park under conditions that are **cumulative** - all six have to hold at once. - **a)** On places designated for the purpose, near refuges that are at least one hour's walk from a road access point open to public traffic, or from the boundary of the core zone. - **b)** Provided each user has reserved with the guardian of the refuge concerned, before pitching, and has presented themselves to the guardian on arrival at the refuge to learn how to set up. - **c)** Without a tent, or in a lightweight tent that does not allow standing height. - **d)** During the summer period when each of those refuges is actually staffed, at the earliest 1 June and at the latest 30 September. - **e)** Between 19:00 in the evening and 08:00 in the morning. - **f)** For a single night near the refuge in question. Article 2 makes breaches a third-class contravention under the second paragraph of article R.331-64 of the Code de l'environnement, enforced by the officers listed at L.331-18 and L.331-20. Condition **a)** is the one most walkers miss. It is a filter on which refuges qualify, and it is why the roadhead refuges do not appear on the park's bivouac list. Condition **e)** is the one most often broken by accident: a tent standing at 09:00 is outside the order regardless of when it went up. ## Which refuges The park publishes the list of refuges in the core zone with a bivouac area. As published for the current season, it covers the park's own refuges - Arpont, Col du Palet, Femma, Fond des Fours, Leisse, Martin, Orgere, Plaisance, Plan du Lac, Prariond, Rosuel, Turia and Vallonbrun - four FFCAM refuges at Carro, Fond d'Aussois, Mont Pourri and Dent Parrachee, and a handful of communal and private refuges including Entre le Lac, Entre deux Eaux, Gliere, Lac Blanc and Lacs Merlets. Two well-known refuges on the classic circuits do **not** take bivouac: Col de la Vanoise and Peclet-Polset. The Peclet-Polset refuge states it on its own booking page, and directs walkers to the Ritord alpage an hour away towards Pralognan-la-Vanoise instead. If your itinerary has you crossing the Col de Chaviere or the Col de la Vanoise, plan those two nights as bed nights or plan around them. Check the list against the park's own map before you commit an itinerary to it. Refuges move on and off it. *Refuge list as published by the Parc national de la Vanoise. Checked 27 August 2026.* ## The booking and the charge Condition b) is a reservation requirement, not a courtesy. It is made directly with the guardian of the refuge concerned, refuge by refuge, on that refuge's own booking arrangements - there is no single park-wide bivouac portal. Pitches at each refuge are limited. A bivouac charge applies at the refuges that take bivouac. The park frames it as a contribution to keeping the refuges maintained as emergency mountain shelters, and it carries access to the refuge's facilities: toilets, the hors-sac room and its cooking equipment, water and washing-up. A half-board meal can generally be added at the time of booking. We do not publish the amounts here, because they are set per refuge and change annually; the refuge's own page is the place to read them. If you want the cost dimension worked through properly, against a real Vanoise circuit rather than a list of tariffs, that is a separate page: [bivouac against huts in the Vanoise, on cost](/guides/bivouac-vs-huts-vanoise-cost/). ## Outside the core zone The core is only part of the massif. The Vanoise traverse routes spend nights in the surrounding communes and in the park's aire d'adhesion, where the park's order does not apply and the rules belong to the commune and to whoever owns the ground. The park's own guidance for the peripheral communes is that bivouac rules vary, that you should consult the mairie for the commune you are in, and that you need the landowner's permission. Much of the valley floor at Pralognan-la-Vanoise, Termignon, Bonneval-sur-Arc, Champagny-en-Vanoise and Peisey-Nancroix is pasture in private or communal hands, and several of the access valleys have their own parking, access and camping orders that change each summer. Note also that several national nature reserves adjoin the park - Grande Sassiere, La Bailletaz, Hauts de Villaroger, Plan de Tueda, Tignes-Champagny - each with its own prefectoral order. Being outside the core zone does not mean being outside a regulated area. We have not verified individual commune orders for this page, and we do not publish rules we have not read. Ask the mairie. *Park guidance for peripheral communes. Individual commune orders not verified. Checked 27 August 2026.* ## The question underneath the question Most people who search this are not researching a wilderness night. They are looking at a Vanoise itinerary where the refuges on their dates show full, and they are working out whether a tent gets them round it. The order above is the answer, and the answer is that it mostly does not. The pitch has to be at a refuge, and it has to be booked with that refuge, and it is capped. Bivouac in the Vanoise is not an alternative to the refuge network. It is a different rate inside it, on the same finite ground, arranged with the same guardian. If the refuge is full, the question of whether it will take your tent is a question you still have to ask the refuge. The Vanoise is unusual among Alpine massifs in having built a legal, workable bivouac regime at all. It is worth using. It is not worth planning a trip around as a fallback for beds you could not get. ## Solve the beds and the question dissolves A Vanoise circuit looks unbookable far more often than it is. The usual reason is that the nights are being searched one refuge at a time, when the actual constraint is a chain: consecutive nights in walking order, each within a day's stage of the last. A refuge with space on the wrong night is not a bed. Shift the start date by two days, or take a variant over a different col, and a circuit that looked closed frequently opens. HutScanner checks the refuges' own booking calendars daily and searches for runs of refuges with space on consecutive nights, in trail order, at the pace you set. The [Vanoise region page](/regions/vanoise/) has the refuges, the stages and the map, and shows what is bookable on the dates ahead. Booking is done directly with each refuge, on its own system, and the reference the refuge issues is the one that counts - for a bunk and for a pitch alike. ## Sources - Parc national de la Vanoise, arrete n°2025-007 regulating bivouac in the core of the Parc national de la Vanoise (published in the establishment's recueil des actes administratifs, and on vanoise-parcnational.fr). - Parc national de la Vanoise, core-zone regulation pages and the responsible-bivouac guidance, for the refuge list, the booking procedure and the charge. - Refuge de Peclet-Polset booking page, for its exclusion of bivouac and the Ritord alternative. - Decree n°2015-473 of 27 April 2015 approving the park's charte, and modality n°34 of the special core-zone regulation, cited in the order's preamble. [Plan this route in HutScanner](/app?region=vanoise) [See the whole Vanoise network](/regions/vanoise/)