I used to be runDisney's west coast course director and we had two courses that utilized the SART, in my 3 years in that job I watched that trail go from pretty decent to nightmarish. It got to the point that we rerouted the courses to completely avoid it which is a damn shame. as the trail is very useful.
I never minded running that portion of the trail in broad daylight, but once the light started to disappear, you wouldn't catch me on those trails at all in that area and i'm a tall male, but I didn't feel safe at all.
I worked on the trail many times in the night before it got completely out of control setting up for races and what not, there were many times my hair would stand on my neck under some of those underpasses. 90-95% of those homeless people are fantastic people who just have fallen on bad times. That 5-10% though...they aren't your friends. For example, we hired security to stand at the underpasses in the final few races we utilized the trail and one year before the event started we even had security call police as a man was near one of the underpasses wantonly brandishing a gun.
Take that for what you will...
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