Bob Kamps (1931–2005) was an American rock climber whose climbing career spanned five decades. Born in Wisconsin, he began climbing in California in 1955, and was a member of that cadre of Yosemite pioneers who first ascended many of its great walls in the 1950s and 1960s. He was particularly adept on steep rock faces, and was among the first to shift attention from aid climbing to free climbing. Over the years he made more than 3,100 climbs. Many were first ascents or first free ascents.
Kamps' interests ranged from ten-foot boulders to high mountain walls. He bouldered at Stoney Point at Chatsworth, California, for fifty years. His companions in the 1950s and 1960s included Royal Robbins, Yvon Chouinard, Mark Powell, and Dave Rearick. After his death in 2005, a memorial service was held there. Kamps bouldered almost everywhere he climbed for any length of time, and John Gill joined him on numerous occasions in the Tetons and Black Hills.
Kamps climbed extensively in California, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, and South Dakota. His climbing partners included Mark Powell, Dave Rearick, Tom Higgins, and Yvon Chouinard. In the Tetons in 1958, Kamps teamed with Chouinard to make the first ascent of the imposing Satisfaction Buttress; but the two were turned back the following year on an attempt on the forbidding north face of the Crooked Thumb on 12,325-foot (3,757 m) Teewinot Mountain, when Chouinard's aid pitons pulled out of the decomposing rock and he took a 150-foot (46 m) fall through open space, held on belay by Kamps. (The climb was completed seven years later by Pete Cleveland).