LAST EDITED ON Jun-25-13 AT 08:41AM (MST)[p]LAST EDITED ON Jun-25-13 AT 08:40?AM (MST)
My family has had cabins/lots on Sunridge for 30+ years. I cut my teeth hunting and fishing up there & over the course of many years things have definitely changed... some things for the better, others not so much.
Hunting up there is "quirky" to say the least. Every spring they hold the landowners meeting and I worry each year that hunting will be further restricted. I'm currently ok with the "primitve weapon" restrictions (as they call it) because I have taken up muzzleloader hunting to be able to continue to hunt up there.
Sunridge itself has limited hunting because no hunting is allowed in the cabin/lot areas, so roughly half the land is not huntable. To truly increase your hunting capabilities up there you would want to also invest in a Vista share. No more shares are being created, but if you could find someone willing to sell theirs I would jump on it. Vista is accessed through Sunridge and some of the other adjoining properties and gives access to the left hand fork of the middle fork bordering Broadmouth CWMU to the west, Sharp Mountain CWMU to the northwest, and the middle fork WMA to the south.
We see lots of animals. I have always thought it to be a "nursery area" for deer as we always see lots of does & fawns and mostly smaller young bucks. The largest buck that my family has taken was a 20" 3x4 that my brother shot last year. On occasion we see some really nice bucks but they seem to be transient moving through early in the year to the higher country of Monte Cristo and then coming back in during the rut in search of does to breed. The moose herd is in decent shape but has taken a considerable hit with all the trading that the DWR has done recently. My grandfather drew in 2005 and shot a 45" 11x11 100 yards from the road. Elk are an interesting story up there as the herd was all but eliminated in the mid-90's and traded to Kentucky for turkeys. It seems like they are attempting a comeback and I'm hoping that since the WMA is now in place that the complaints from local ranchers will be fewer and the herd will be allowed to grow.
The fishing has gone in the crapper. The right had fork of the middle fork used to be a sustainable fishery with good water throughout the summer, but because of the heavy water usage by the cabin/lot owners the creek is all but dried up by August (and they'll be adding a new larger reservoir to hold more water this summer so I don't see this turning around EVER). It's unfortunate because I could put on a little #16 Humpy and catch 80 fish in 4 hours. The DWR wanted to rehabilitate the stream and reintroduce the native cutthroat trout population with a price tag of a quarter million or so but realized that it would be a waste of resources because the water levels get too low to sustain any viable cutthroat population. A reservoir was constructed to provide water in the case of a fire up there and it gets stocked annually with tiger trout, but it tends to be shoulder to shoulder especially on the busy weekends.
If the lot does not currently have a cabin on it then be prepared for heavy fees to build... Weber County insists on an "environmental impact survey" that really adds substantial red tape. If there's is nothing already on the lot most buyers are opting to keep trailers to avoid the heavy fees to build. I know of several lots with cabins that are for sale but they are going for $100k plus. Check out the website: sunridge.info. One other thing that irritates me... take a look at the newsletter (The RidgeRunner) & you'll notice that all the board members are nothing but ornery old men that gripe and complain about how 80% of the work gets done by 20% of the people. Blah, blah, blah... there's definitely the mentality of everyone wants it to be perfect & pristine but someone else can do the maintenance. Plus, there are so many covenants and restricitons (and new ones being made each year) and enforcement of these rules is nonexistant so what do you expect!?!