Jade Cove

Looking down into the cove - you can see the trail down.

Our compatriot, park aide, surfer, and jade finder extraordinaire, Dylan, has shown us many beautiful pieces of jade he has found on the beaches near here.  He also told us about Jade Cove.  Jade cove is the purported best place to find jade in this area.  He told us the trail down was a “little climb” and we went for it.  After all, the cove is full of jade. So we slowly made our way down the steep trail, all the way to 30 feet above the bottom.  And then, we grabbed hold of the rope attached to the cliffs, wrapped it around our hands and hopped, repelled, and slithered our way down to the bottom.  We made it, and then we looked up, and wondered how the hell were we going to get back up.

The cove is full of rocks

And more rocks.

We scrounged through the rocks, and rocks and more rocks.  We found lots of green rocks.  Can they all be jade?  We talked to other jade searchers.  We still didn’t know if we had jade.  So we just kept looking and filling our pockets with rocks.  I did notice some young women sitting above the last 30 feet, waiting for their comrades and refusing to go down the last drop.  Did they know something we didn’t?  It did raise our anxiety level a tad! 

Once we had both gained about 20 pounds in rocks, we decided that it was time to climb out.  Mike, man with a worn out painful shoulder went first.  And then I climbed out.  Really, it was pretty easy, but we both kept thinking , just what would happen if we slipped.  There may be a reason why no other people our age climbed down there.  We haven’t been back.

Active jade hunter

Halfway up

At the top of the rope!

So we took our precious findings back to camp to show Dylan.  He very tactfully went through our collection and showed us what was “false jade”; a soft soapstone type of green rock, and what was jade. It turns out Jade is very hard and can’t be scratched with steel. The false jade pile was 39.99 pounds and the real jade, was one piece, ¼ inch in diameter. 

We have since learned that Sand Dollar Beach also has jade, and it has a real trail all the way to the beach.  Dylan finds beautiful pieces almost every day when he goes to surf.  And we find lots of pretty green rocks.  Soft rocks.