[420 Girl]

SWAT teams with the Boulder County Sheriff's Office and Longmont Police Department are back in the mountains west of Lyons today looking for more marijuana plants and collecting about 3,000 plants that they've already uprooted from the U.S. Forest Service land.

Officers found the plants, worth about $500,000, during a massive search Monday for a man “known to be heavily armed” and suspected of being involved in the illegal growing operation near the towns of Raymond and Riverside. Although they didn't find the suspect — described as a 5-foot, 6-inch Hispanic man weighing about 150 pounds — officers discovered evidence that several people are involved in the operation, sheriff's Cmdr. Rick Brough said.

He said that within a day, officers are planning to airlift large piles of 3½- to 5 ½-foot-tall marijuana plants out of the rugged backcountry. The plants could be wrapped in cargo nets attached to helicopters, Brough said.

The Sheriff's Office is working with the U.S. Forest Service to determine whether the operation is connected to any other illegal marijuana grows found on Forest Service land in Colorado or around the nation in the past few years, Brough said.

Last summer, the U.S. Forest Service's Rocky Mountain Region seized nearly 20,000 marijuana plants from national forest land in Colorado. At the time, officials said the growing operations were funded and run by international drug cartels.

A hiker stumbled upon the grow near Lyons last week and notified the Sheriff's Office. Monday's search started after deputies with the county's Drug Task Force went to conduct surveillance in the area and saw a man running away, according to the Sheriff's Office.

Authorities said the operation had a “professional set-up,” and the Sheriff's Office received information that it “could be attended on a regular basis” by people who are armed.


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