Bob Kamps

Bob Kamps (1931 to 2005) was an American rock climber whose career ran for five decades. Born in Wisconsin, he started climbing in California in 1955 and became one of the Yosemite pioneers who made first ascents of many great walls in the 1950s and 1960s. He was especially skilled on steep rock faces and was among the first climbers to turn attention from aid climbing to free climbing. Over his life he made more than 3,100 climbs, many of them first ascents or first free ascents. With Dave Rearick he made the first ascent of the Diamond on Longs Peak in Colorado in 1960, and he wrote the 1971 American Alpine Club guide to the Needles of the Black Hills of South Dakota. He bouldered at Stoney Point in Chatsworth, California, for fifty years and kept leading hard routes into his seventies.