Earlier this year, Eaglecrest’s new management/exploration team began a district-wide exploration campaign to evaluate and generate new gold exploration targets outside the known Trinidad Vein mineralized area of the company’s vast San Simon property.
       Rock chip and soil samples quickly identified four new gold targets between the Trinidad and Paititi zones and a fifth at the Dona Angela plateau, where the mineralization is very similar to that at the more advanced-stage Trinidad and Manganeso areas of the San Simon project.
       In fact, considering that less than five percent of the 300 sq. km property has been explored, these targets appear to be only the first of many yet to come. The Dona Angela target, which is more distant from the company’s infrastructure and the previously identified mineralization zones, strongly indicates the project’s district potential.
       Soil sampling at Paititi yielded from below detection to 1.57 g/t gold, while rock chips at Dona Angela ranged from below detection to 9.3 g/t gold and soil samples tested from below detection to 1.14 g/t gold. The Paititi targets will be the focus of follow-up exploration activities and eventual drilling, largely because of its proximity to Eaglecrest’s existing infrastructure.
       “I am very encouraged by the new geochemical results,” says Rasmussen. “At Paititi, four new targets occur in areas not recognized by prior exploration. And what is particularly encouraging is a new 400-meter extension of the Trinidad gold mineralization that we are currently drilling. These new targets further verify that San Simon has tremendous district-wide exploration potential.”

       Simultaneously with exploration activities, Eaglecrest is continuing to drill and sample the L463 ore shoot at the known Trinidad Vein in an effort to define a preliminary gold resource or the 40-square-kilometer Doña Amelia zone. The program is designed particularly to verify the true grade of gold mineralization localized in multiple, sub-vertical ore shoots similar to those found in world class gold deposits in Brazil and Ghana.
       The L463 ore shoot is the first to be drilled this year. Underground bulk sampling to date had previously yielded 11.7 meters averaging 10.0 g/t gold, and most recently the Company announced 12.7 meters of 12.0 g/t gold from a new, deeper drift in the L463 ore shoot.
       “These high gold grades over thick intervals are excellent and further justify out detailed drilling of these shoots,” says Rasmussen. “The volume of gold mineralization contained within the L463 shoot has been increased substantially by our new detailed drilling program.”
       Underground development at the ore shoot currently is 57.7 meters wide. The gold mineralization extends from the surface where prospectors have extracted about 75,000 ounces historically, and the drilling results indicate the shoot is open to depth.

       The San Simon property, first explored by Bandierantes from Brazil and Jesuit monks in the 1700s, is located within Bolivia’s Precambrian Shield near the Brazilian border and 450 kilometers north of Santa Cruz. The 300-meter-high plateau includes several areas of known mineralization, including the Doña Amelia, San Simon, and Marco Maria zones, as well as the Doña Angela zone located on an adjacent plateau. The property is characterized by mesothermal gold mineralization along a major thrust fault.
       Since 2003, Eaglecrest has drilled over 292 holes to a maximum depth of 760 meters, totaling more than 70,000 meters of drilling. Until now, exploration has focused on the Doña Amelia Zone, which has a 4.2 kilometer strike length with gold in quartz veins up to 15.9 meters thick.
       The area’s geology is much like that found at some of the world’s richest quartz-vein gold deposits – the Kinross’ Crixas Deposit (1 million oz.) and Yamana Gold’s Saõ Francisco Deposit (1.4 million oz.) in Brazil, as well as Ashanti-type deposits in Ghana (45 million oz.).
       San Simon’s age of gold mineralization, ore shoot geometry and control within the 4.2 kilometer-long thrust fault is similar to the gold deposits at Ashanti, in Ghana, West Africa, where a main fissure/structure controls the location of the gold deposits. Ore shoots in these mines often extend several hundred meters vertically over widths of up to 30 feet. Gold grades vary up to over 30 g/t.
       Rasmussen says “detailed exploration drilling of ore shoots has the potential to yield thick intervals of high gold grades because gold mineralization spreads out of the main thrust vault into both the hanging wall and footwall. We have seen mineralization spread up to 10 meters in either direction. Since beginning our detailed drilling in April, one third of our drill holes have returned greater than 10 g/t gold in the L463 shoot drilling.”

       With a duel focus on detailed drilling to a resource and district-scale exploration, Eaglecrest has reconfigured its management team with a focus on technical expertise.
       The company’s president, Hans Rasmussen, an exploration geophysicist and geologist, has more than 23 years mining sector experience in both North and South America. He was Country Manager of Argentina and Bolivia for the Kennecott/Rio Tinto group, and worked, as well with Newmont Exploration and White Knight Resources in a Nevada.
       Eaglecrest’s other Board member, Dr. Odin Christensen, was Chief Geologist for Newmont Mining for over twenty years, and has considerable experience with similar types of gold deposits in Bolivia, Brazil, Mongolia and North America. As Newmont’s exploration manager in the 1980s, he guided the exploration teams that were responsible for transforming the Carlin Trend in Nevada from a singe mine into the largest gold district in the U.S.
       Eaglecrest’s newest board member is Tom Henricksen who brings over 30 years experience in both North and South America.

       Eaglecrest both controls a massive property in resource-rich Bolivia and consistently shows investors improved exploration results. The company maintains excellent relations with local and national officials, and remains unaffected by new, more restrictive mining laws.
       Eaglecrest has built an extensive, operating infrastructure that includes underground facilities, a gold processing mill, an on-site assay laboratory, and 150-strong technical staff. With the almost instantaneous ability to calculate drill results, the company will generate its first in-house resource estimate, and a 43-101 resource estimate in early 2008.
       The company completed a US$4.8 million non-brokered financing in September, and with US$8 million in pending warrants there will be enough cash on hand to reach the resource calculation goals in early 2008.
       The company recently hired Barnes McInerney, the largest investor relations firm in Canada, to help the company convey their key messages more effectively to the investment community, and to help prepare the company for an eventual listing on the TSX in early 2008.
       “This is an exciting stage in our development as we continue to build our technical team on site as well as strengthen our board of directors for an aggressive future,” says Eaglecrest President Hans Rasmussen. “We want to deliver a resource to the market while also demonstrating the tremendous blue sky exploration potential at San Simon, while also looking at other investment ideas in the undervalued Bolivian mining sector.”
Eaglecrest’s aggressive effort to prove up a significant gold resource could soon confirm management’s belief that San Simon is a world-class gold district.