Highbanking for Gold

Highbanking for gold is considered the most effective modern method for finding gold in stream beds.  Because of today’s technology, using a power sluice can be done alone or with the help of an experienced gold panner.  You can choose to do this recreationally or with enough success, as a job to give you income.

Highbanking for gold can be time-consuming and takes much time to plan the location for the absolute best results. Highbankers can also be useful for finding other minerals and gems.  With the right amount of persistence, highbanking for gold can be extremely profitable.

The most important part of highbanking is knowing where to look for the right deposits; this is central to finding gold. If you’re highbanking for gold in the wrong places, you will be wasting your time and money.

What Is Gold Highbanking?

Highbanking is a method of prospecting gold and other minerals using a power sluice to pump water through gravel to reveal gold and other minerals. It is done at a specific pressure to mimic water flow, which would naturally reveal the gold.

The main purpose of highbanking for gold is to reveal new bedrock exposure that has not been exposed to sunlight for some time; the gold that has settled into these crevices will become visible when exposed to light after being covered with sand recently disturbed. 

Highbanking can also expose bedrock cracks where small flakes of gold may get caught up over time. These little flakes can add up to significant amounts of gold which you may miss if not for banking. A good deal of highbanking occurs on bedrock exposures that have a significant amount of gravel.

What Do You Need When Highbanking For Gold?

Before going highbanking, there are some things you’ll need to get yourself started. Along with needing a highbanker (The 3 Best Highbankers & Power Sluice Options With Reviews), some other useful things are:

• • A sluice box to collect gravel in. 
  • A gold pan with low sides makes it easy to see what you find when you are finished using it. It will save time in the long run since you won’t have to keep refilling or emptying the pan while highbanking.
  • A snuffer bottle to get the small gold particles out of your pan. 
  • A shovel to dig up stream beds and bank gravel from other areas into them.
  • Heavy-duty gloves to handle rocks, gravel, and possibly sharp materials
  • Crevicing tools for searching bedrock.

• Time to get to your location, dig up gravel, and sort through your findings.
• A good location with a good flow of water. 

Professional miners typically use tubes with high-pressure pumps instead of snuffer bottles attached to them to suck up the gravel and water mixture. The best kind of tube has metal netting covering the intake so that very tiny pieces of gold can get caught in it and stay away from the pump parts where they would get stuck. 

Below is a fantastic video showing how to use a highbanker and as well as set it up.

How to Highbank for Gold

If you’re looking for gold, look no further than your nearest river. It is done by clearing away larger rocks than a breadbox and then using a flat pan to separate the metal flakes from gravel and sand, or “pay dirt.”

First, you should start from the top of the river and work your way down. Next, find areas around a gravel bar or a known area that has gold. 

Once you’ve found the location, you’d like to highbank in, dig up a large amount of stream bed and use a pan or a sluice box to sort through any rocks you find. If you find gold, keep going higher until you have found as much as you can get out of that one spot – do not go back for more later unless it’s an extremely productive area. 

Then, move on to another place along the same stretch of riverbank and repeat the previously mentioned steps as many times as necessary until you cannot find gold anymore (or pan out). Here is an explanatory video showing the highbanking process and how it takes time to sift through the findings.

Highbanking requires lots and lots of patience and time; however, this process can be advantageous and worth the effort.

Best Places To Highbank For Gold

Choosing the right location when highbanking for gold is very important. If you choose poorly, you will end up wasting time and money.  Some ideal circumstances for the places you choose to highbank gold are:

• Swift moving water—the faster, the better. The quicker moving the water is, the less time particles have to settle out of suspension, which results in finding more gold per load than slower-moving waters.
• Water depth – The deeper the water, the more likely it is to sufficiently move away sand and silt so that your pan or sluice box can effectively sift through what remains and be able to capture heavier materials such as gold.
• Water debris content – Although not always true, when looking for gold in rivers or creeks, it is usually more productive to seek out waterways with minimal amounts of trees and vegetation in the water. Things like dead wood can slow down river currents, resulting in larger particles settling out before reaching your pan or sluice box.
• Areas where gold has been found – It is best to do plenty of research ahead of time to give yourself the best chance at locating gold faster.

Some of the most productive places gold deposits are found are where the stream leaves deep ravines. Here, normally swift currents have cut into the bedrock and left steep banks high above their original levels. 

Best Regions for Highbanking For Gold

Many popular regions in the United States are known highbanking for gold success. Prospectors will travel to these regions, just as the miners did during the California Gold Rush, except they have better chances of finding gold and other metals nowadays.

Some regions that are known for highbanking are:

• Alaska: there is the bedrock that the glaciers have exposed, and it tends to be very flat or just slightly sloped with virtually no streamflow or water going over them, so it’s less likely to have been mined already. Miners have also been known to find other minerals such as magnetite and garnet. 
• California: was the original place where thousands of people went for the Gold Rush due to rumors of finding gold out west. Nowadays, there are still many rivers that are rich with gold and many other metals and minerals.
• Colorado: is another popular place to prospect for gold. It’s known as the highest gold-producing state in the United States. 

Do I Need any Permits or Licenses to Highbank or Prospect?

For most locations, there are no licenses or permits needed to highbank for gold. However, depending on where you’re mining, local rules may prohibit activities that might pose a safety hazard while you are highbanking. Contact the local Parks and Recreation Department to see if permits are necessary.

For example, in British Columbia, it is illegal to use even a homemade sluice box in any navigable waterway. Before planning your adventure to the Canadian backcountry, call the appropriate department of the government where you plan to prospect or highbank and ask about potential regulations or restrictions.

Other Methods to Farm Gold

Several other methods to farm for gold, but all carry added risks and require additional equipment. Except for panning, which is generally limited to small-scale operations in creeks or streams, gold mining methods require larger investments, either financial or time-wise.

Sluices

Sluices are the most common method to farm for gold. While they are often used for highbanking, you can use them in a different mining style. What differentiates sluicing from highbanking is that sluices are placed in the water while highbankers are placed above or near a water source.

Sluices are used during placer gold mining comes in two styles: riffles and sluice boxes. In both cases, the material being worked over is exposed to a water flow that acts as a method of washing away lighter particles of gravel, leaving behind anything heavier such as nuggets or flakes of gold. 

Traditional sluicing does take a bit longer than highbanking because you have to sort out everything yourself, wherewith highbanking, the power sluice, does the sorting for you.

Click Here To View Our Top 5 Portable Sluice Box Options

Gold Pans

A gold pan is a shallow trough with riffles along one side and a flat bottom. A stream of running water carries away lighter particles while leaving the heavier material behind in the gold pan. Gold pans are usually combined with either sluices or dredges to enhance yields.

Gold panning is also a fantastic way to sample the area before committing to highbanking or sluicing.

Click Here To View The 5 Best Gold Pan Options

Dry Washing

Of course, there are other methods to extract all that treasure from the gravels and sands than simply using a pan or sluice box. Using a dry washer, you don’t expose your materials directly to water sources. Instead, you use gravity to separate your material into fine particles that can be processed according to what minerals or gems they may contain.

You also use compressed air or air from a bellow to remove the dirt and dust. This separates the lighter material from the heavier material and allows you to sift through for gold and other minerals. Dry-washing is the best option for mining gold in dry climates where there’s not much water to separate the materials.

Suction Dredging

Suction dredging is a method to prospect gold where you use a suction tube to sift through material for gold.  It is extremely efficient for sorting through the gravel and getting gold and metals; however, they require a large investment in machinery and gasoline to get the machine going.

Essentially, suction dredging is like using an underwater vacuum cleaner to suck up all the gravel to deposit it into the sluice to sort everything. Gold Dredges come in many different sizes, depending on how much gas you want to burn using them and how much you can potentially yield at the end of the day. 

It has recently been banned in some places, including the state of California.

Can you Highbank for Other Minerals or Gems?

You can absolutely highbank for other minerals or gems. The principles are the same for highbanking gold. You have to be aware of what you could potentially lose along with any gold! If there is a significant amount of silver, zinc, brass, copper, or iron, it will give your find away by leaving discoloration in the sands.

Highbanking for Recreation

Highbanking is an interesting and fun way to spend time at the river. Try high banking instead if you enjoy panning but wish your efforts would be more productive. You can spend as much or as little time at it as you like, and if you put in a decent day’s work, you will most likely find plenty of paydirt.

Many caverns around the United States also offer guests a fun activity to purchase a bag of gravel and use a pan to sift through the gravel and fine precious stones to get a small taste of what highbanking is like.

Highbanking For Gold Conclusion

Highbanking is a great hobby to get into to farm gold or other minerals. It can be expensive with startup costs, and it also is very time-consuming. Finally, highbanking also requires patience with what you get in the end. Finding an ideal place to highbank will yield the best results for you and your pockets.