Olympio Metals drills deeper targeting more gold in Canada’s Cadillac Break
- Bill McConnell
- Jul 9
- 3 min read
Olympio Metals (ASX: OLY) has extended its maiden diamond drilling campaign at its Bousquet gold project in Canada’s world-class Cadillac Break, chasing a potential structural link between two high-grade prospects after recently uncovering visible gold in its first drill hole.
The company has expanded its exploration efforts to include the Amadee prospect, a target showing strong similarities to Olympio’s nearby Paquin gold prospect. One hole at Paquin struck visible gold from 187.9 metres within a smoky quartz vein – a hallmark feature of gold mineralisation throughout the region.
Management says geological observations and historical drilling suggest Amadee and Paquin may be hosted on the same continuous mineralised structure, which could extend more than a kilometre in strike.
Outcropping smoky quartz veins at Amadee are interpreted to be mineralised and appear visually identical to those that hosted high-grade gold at Paquin. Historical intercepts at Amadee include a notable 1.52m at 6.8 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from just 16.8m depth, while channel samples have returned up to 8g/t gold across surface exposures.
Olympio has already completed eight holes at Amadee for 898m. The company is now planning an additional three holes to test the westerly extent of the target while it awaits assays from the initial holes drilled in the current campaign. The first batch of results is expected within the next few weeks.
“Given what we have seen to date in our maiden drill program at the Bousquet project we want to keep the momentum going and will continue to drill a number of exciting targets, including Amadee, while we wait for the first assays.” Olympio Metals managing director Sean Delaney
Quebec’s Cadillac Break is a terrane-bounding structure that has yielded more than 110 million ounces of gold and hosts some of the world’s most prolific gold camps.
The break is home to Lamgold’s 2.4-million-ounce Westwood gold mine, just 10km east of Olympio’s ground, and Agnico Eagle’s 15.8-million-ounce La Ronde operation, which is 5km further on. The Rouyn-Noranda mining centre and Glencore’s Horne copper smelter lie west.
Paquin, one of the company’s lead prospects at Bousquet, has been a key focus since drilling began in late June. The zone previously returned an impressive 9m at 16.96g/t gold from 178.5m, including 1m grading an eye-popping 129.25g/t. The structure is defined by steeply dipping quartz vein systems containing sulphides such as arsenopyrite and pyrite – conditions also noted at Amadee.
Olympio’s current campaign is part of a permitted 10,000m drill program encompassing 38 holes across several high-priority prospects, including Decoeur and the underexplored Decoeur Extension.
Drilling is being carried out by local contractor Diafor. Oriented core is being collected to support future structural modelling.
Olympio recently bolstered its balance sheet with a $1.6 million capital raise comprising a $1.5 million placement to sophisticated investors and a $100,000 commitment from directors, subject to shareholder approval. The funds are earmarked to drive the Bousquet and nearby Dufay projects forward.
Dufay, 60km west of Bousquet, also sits along the Cadillac Break and has recently delivered promising copper results. In June, Olympio revealed that diamond drilling at its Dasserat prospect within Dufay had identified more than 850m of strike with copper mineralisation grading up to 1.64 per cent. Multiple zones up to 27m wide were intercepted, which closely matched IP and EM geophysical models.
While copper was the primary focus at Dufay, both projects sit within the broader Cadillac–Larder Lake Fault Zone, renowned globally for hosting some of the highest-grade and largest gold deposits in North America. These include La Ronde and Westwood, as well as the nearby 1-million-ounce O’Brien gold deposit operated by Radisson Mining and the 1.8-,illion-ounce Hosco resource owned by Hecla.
Olympio’s combined landholding across Bousquet and Dufay now gives it exposure to some 20km of this coveted geological corridor. The region also has strong infrastructure in place, including road, rail and year-round access to hydroelectric power.
Olympio’s Canadian campaign has evolved into one of the more active junior-led exploration programs along the Cadillac Break this year, with drill rigs turning, visible gold in hand and assays on the horizon.
If assays confirm the visual indicators at both Paquin and Amadee, Olympio could soon find itself playing with a very valuable piece of the Cadillac Break puzzle.
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