MASSIVE POT FARM IN HILLS DISCOVERED

From 100 feet in the air, it's just another steep hillside covered with
madrone, manzanita and cedar.

But if the sun is right, you can just barely see the thousands of emerald
green marijuana stalks lurking underneath the canopy.

"That shade of green gives it away," said Gabe Escovedo of the Campaign
Against Marijuana Planting. "Pot is the only thing up here that gets any
water in September."

Escovedo and his 15-man team thought they would be lucky to discover a
couple thousand plants Monday. Instead, they were shocked to find the
biggest known pot farm in San Mateo County: 11,800-plants on San Francisco
watershed land.

A CAMP-contracted helicopter dropped officers into the garden using a
150-foot line.

The first thing they noticed was the smell. The pot plants were all females
with gooey red-green buds, oozing with THC, the active ingredient in marijuana.

"This is sweet stuff," said Dan Schillaci, a San Carlos police officer who
bought drugs undercover before joining CAMP. "This garden is worth millions
and millions on the streets of San Francisco."

The value was estimated at $45 million and investigators believe the
growers probably invested less than $20,000 for irrigation pipe, seeds and
fertilizer, and labor costs.

The growers disappeared into the woods before cops landed. But they left
their camp site, breakfast tortillas still cooking on a Coleman gas stove.

About 100 feet from the garden in a grove of cedars, growers built a
two-story tree house by lashing madrone logs together.

In camp, they had a 50-pound bag of flour, a tortilla press, a large bag of
dried jalapeno peppers, cooking oil and "Abuelita" -- a popular Mexican
chocolate for cocoa, cookies for snacks. A plastic image of Mexico's patron
saint, Our Lady of Guadalupe, was attached to a tree.

Along with sleeping bags, there were porn magazines, hundreds of empty
Budweiser cans and empty food containers.

"These guys were all set," Schillaci said. "They hiked all this crap in
here. You know they've been here a while."

The pot farm is high in the San Mateo County hills, about 2 miles west of
the Pulgas Water Temple at Crystal Springs Reservoir. There are stunning
views of The Bay and Mount Diablo. The property is off-limits to the
public, so unlike pot farms in national forests or range lands, the growers
had little fear of hikers or hunters stumbling into their stash.

From Interstate 280, the hills look like a mass of green, brown and gold
vegetation. But there is a variety of thick woods that hasn't been logged
for decades.

Police were tipped off to the farm in August by a water district ranger who
saw black plastic irrigation pipe while hiking. He followed the pipe,
crawling several hundred feet down from a spring to the edge of a pot
field. The unarmed ranger noted the location, then retreated for fear of
alerting the growers.

The ranger did not realize the size of the farm. Veteran CAMP investigators
estimated the garden was two or three years old at least. That would mean
the organized crime group that is believed to be backing the growers has
already made millions from the farm.

Members of the CAMP high-fived at the size of Monday's bust. But their glee
was tempered by the knowledge that somewhere else -- possibly in those same
hills -- there are other farms that escaped detection.