SHARON –A new trail in Sharon offers hikers both a workout and a view, with the option of cooling off in Mudge Pond when the hard work is done.
The Sharon Land Trust opened the Degrand Beach Trail in the last week of August, following a three-year planning and construction process that required approximately 1,700 hours of volunteer labor.
The trail connects Sharon Town Beach on Mudge Pond with a parcel donated to the land trust in 2024 by Tom Degrand. From the beach, it climbs the steep eastern slope of Indian Mountain.
During a midday hike in early September, Sharon Land Trust Stewardship Director Tim Hunter reflected on the long, difficult days volunteers spent building a trail through the rugged terrain.
“A lot of hands came together to make this happen,” he said.
Hunter and Land Steward Sophie Lake-Ginouves directed the project with help from two assistant stewards and dozens of volunteers. He said building the trail was difficult, and hiking it will be, too.
“This is our hardest trail,” he said, both to construct and to hike, “mostly due to the topography.”
When trekkers enter the trail from a small parking area on Drum Road, just steps from the Town Beach, they are greeted with a sign that warns them to be prepared for difficult and rocky terrain.
Over the course of 1.3 miles, the trail climbs approximately 600 feet. However, much of the ascent is concentrated in a short but very steep section of switchbacks and stone staircases that cut a jagged path up the forested hillside. At over 150 steps, made of stones of up to 600 pounds and in some cases more, the trail has more stairs than all other SLT-managed trails combine, Hunter said.
Planning was still in its early stages when Lake-Ginouves, an experienced hiker, joined the SLT team two years ago and began helping map the route. During the September hike, she said she immediately embraced the project, her first experience designing a trail.
Despite the grueling labor–which involved hauling tons of soil up, down and across the mountainside and flipping massive stones with pickaxe-like tools called pick mattocks–Lake-Ginouves said she was sorry to see the work end.
“I’m actually kind of devastated the trail is done because it means we can’t work on it anymore,” she said.
Lake-Ginouves said one thing that surprised her during the build process was “what a person is physically capable of”—herself included.
“You said you wanted to get buff!” Hunter quipped from a few paces behind on the trail.
The other thing that surprised them?
“How many people are as crazy as we are,” Hunter said of the volunteer crews who dedicated hours and hiked thousands of vertical feet in the effort.
From his own calculations, Hunter said that “some of our volunteers have climbed this trail so many times that they’ve gone over the elevation gain from [Everest] base camp to the summit of Mount Everest”—approximately 11,500 feet.
“You can see it in their eyes how proud they are of what they accomplished,” he said, noting that a significant amount of the work was done by high schoolers participating in the SLT’s summer Student Work Program, with hardly a complaint from any of them, the pair reported.
“It’s definitely life affirming when you see these kids excited about the work,” Hunter said.
The summer student crews were instrumental in building some of the steepest sections of the trail, which climb until it levels out at an expansive view looking east over Sharon’s rolling hills and to green peaks beyond. When the foliage is gone, the sightlines are even more impressive, Lake-Ginouves said.
“There’s a lot of protected land in this view,” Hunter said, gesturing at the patchwork of farms and forest below, much of it under SLT ownership or management.
