While you could do the approach from the west face of Chimney you might want to think about going over from the east face side of the Horton ridge-Roothan approach. You can start the Silver Dollar approach from the east side of Chimney Rock so you don't loose so much altitude from Roothan that you'd have to regain. Best way to get there is traverse Roothan and go through the notch on the ridge connecting Roothan to Chimney. Even easier to walk east a bit and around that ridge between it and Roothan to get on the east side. It is all 3rd class or less and easy in lwt hiking bbots or running shoes. Then it is an easy walk past the NE ridge on Chimney and stay on the crest for a ways until the easiest line to the west face of Silver Dollar becomes obvious. I would
not take the longer and more complicated line Laird has drawn in his guide book as an approach over the entire Selkirk crest to Silver Dollar. The easiest acccess to the west side of Silver Dollar is to actually drop off close to his first "a" in the line diagram on the right hand of page 113 of his guide and then go under that cirque wall while staying on the slabs and a high traverse. The travel is easier than it looks and route finding easy.
The West ridge looks to be an awesome but short alpine rock climb. If the west face is any example the rock will be stellar and "realitivly clean", Selkirk granite. If you pick your way I doubt you'll find any real difficulties or major features. I suspect a short rope would work fine. And there are some stunning views! Only been over there once, fall of '94 so not much help past that, sorry. Steve Jeffries and I did the 1st ascent of the west face proper by the most obvious line up the middle of the face. (2 good pitches 5.10+/5.11-, one a great corner crack the other a series of wild mantels) Time to spare coming down off Silver Dollar in day light and back to Chimney in late fall. (late Sept iirc) We did however walk back through the east face boulder field and over Roothann in the dark and a raging blizzard. I might suggest a earlier, predawn, start from Roothan to avoid that possibility again.
The walk out in the blizzard turned into a minor, un-fun, epic.
A few pics of that trip. Some are purely glory shots but maybe the others will help.
Looking back at the N. and E face of Chimney on the walk in. Approach is down the slabs on the left and nice hiking. Also shows where you might go over the ridge from the west side and the talus field and elevation loss (more than it looks here) you'd be forced to deal with.
The west face of Silver Dollar you'll walk under on the approach. The west ridge route is the left sky line in this picture.
Steve leading the first and crux pitch.
The summit shot..
Minute or two later Steve looking back at Roothan and Chimney as the weather starts to turn. This one shows both routes over from Chimney pretty well and a better perspective of the scale involved. The way we went you just stay on top of that cirque wall coming off Chimney's NE corner till it peters out and enables you to drop into the one of many small cirques that the west face of Silver Dollar is just one of. Route finding through there is easy. Good luck! Going to be fun to read your TR!
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