Prospecting for Jade

It all started with a friend of a friend of a friend, who is a jade sculptor. I had no idea that jade could be found naturally in the area, but apparently it can - south of Big Sur, at a place aptly named Jade Cove.

The sculptor dives there for the big bits he needs for his business, but smaller bits gets washed ashore on to the rocky beach - and anyone can go "prospecting" for them. I fancied the idea of going and checking it out for a while now, and the current four day weekend seemed like an ideal opportunity.

Jade Cove is about 65 miles south of Monterey, and with low tide occurring in late afternoon, I hatched a plan - leave late morning, grab a sandwich for lunch and eat it at the condor hangout - maybe I can get a decent shot if I'm lucky - then head on down to the cove.

First photo below is of the Big Sur coastline - most of the 65 mile long drive is in scenery like this - can't really go wrong!

I call in at the deli in Big Sur and get a tuna sandwich to go and head down to the condor hangout. There's no-one else there and I sit on the guard rail eating my sandwich looking out for condors.

About three bites into the sandwich I realize there's one perched in one of the trees nearby - just standing there. I decide to finish the first half of the sandwich as the bird looks to be quite content sitting there.

I finish, go to the car, unpack the big lens and the camera and fix it all up, glancing at the bird to make sure it doesn't fly off before I'm ready. Thankfully it didn't. I point the camera at the bird, and it's a little far away, even with the big lens, but I snap a few shots and see what's what.

Then after about a minute, it decides to leave and flies right past me and heads south by the side of the highway - I snap away! It then disappears around a corner and then comes back for another lap a couple of minutes later (again, I snap away). I now have my cool condor photo. It's not the one below (my cool shot has the whole bird in it) - this is a close up as it initially flew past - note the radio aerials attached to its wings.

After the bird didn't return a second time, I headed on down the coast to Jade Cove. I found the cove easily enough (there's a big sign - Jade Cove - it'd be hard to miss), parked the car and headed off down the trail towards the rocky beach.

My big problem is that I have no real idea how to tell if something is actually jade. I know it's supposed to be green-ish, but that's about it. Thankfully I get lucky as I end up talking to a guy who knows what's what and he showed me the best places to go and what to look for.

The trail down to the rocky beach gets steep and slippery and the waves were large today too, but I followed this guy's lead and headed to the best bit of the cove that the waves permitted us to get to (we couldn't get to the best bit as the waves kept crashing in all over it).

The photo below shows some of the waves crashing in on the shore.

After a while, hunting around in the rocks, I started to get a feel for what was jade and what wasn't. The local expert checked rocks out for me, and after an initial no clue what so ever, I was up to around 60-70% correct when I was identifying jade within the hour.

I came away with a handful of small, low grade pieces of jade - but it was a very cool experience - now I need to learn how to polish the bits I have, just to see what they'll look like in their best light.

I'll have to go back again sometime as the drive itself was worth it, but the fun destination made it all the more compelling.