What is a Highbanker?

In the simplest terms a highbanker is a piece of gold prospecting equipment. It uses a pump to draw water into a sluice box and was the gold bearing dirt over the ripples. The gravel is placed into a hopper at the top of the highbanker. At the bottom of the hopper is a classifier that will work out any large rocks. These have to be cleaned out of the hopper periodically. The pump can be electric or gas powered. It can draw water right from the stream or recirculate it out of a tub. The latter is called a recirculating sluice or highbanker.

The benefits of highbankers are that you can take a light weight sluice and motor to the gold bearing gravel. Is removes the need to haul material to the water. This speeds up recover and puts more gold in your pocket faster. If you have a recirculating unit then it can be operated in the desert where there is no water.

Water is pumped to the top of a hopper where it is sprayed out of a washer bar onto the material. It washes it down onto a normal in stream sluice that has been angled down into a catch basin. Then just like a normal sluice you clean it up at periodic moments during the gold prospecting trip. The material that is taken from the sluice is further run through a gold pan to clean it up.
A highbanker is a powerful tool that can really increase ones gold recovery.
Happy Prospecting!