Paul Williams, 80; Climber Co-Founded Group for Mountain Rescue Volunteers

Paul Williams, a Pacific Northwest climber who responded to the increasing popularity of mountain climbing in the 1950s by helping to establish a national network of mountain rescue volunteers, has died. He was 80.

Williams, a lawyer who also wrote a guide to organizing mountain rescue units, died from congestive heart failure at home Wednesday in Hansville, Wash., said his son Brian.

“He was a natural leader who knew the backcountry and the perils people would get into, and he knew how to survive them,” Brian Williams said.

After using his legal skills to help form Seattle Mountain Rescue and later lead it, Paul Williams turned to the national scene.

“He recognized they needed a parent organization so there was some uniformity to rescues across the country,” his son said.

In 1958, at a lodge at Mt. Hood, Ore., Williams drafted incorporation papers for what became the national Mountain Rescue Assn.; he also led that group. The largely volunteer organization oversees team training and seldom charges for its search-and-rescue operations, according to the group’s website.

Williams passed on his organizational knowledge in “Rescue Leadership,” a 1977 primer that rescue teams still use today, his son said.

“He’d answer any call, day or night,” Brian Williams said. “He’d just about walk out of court to participate in a rescue.”

Neighbors who had never planted an ice ax in rock-hard snow could tell that the father of eight belonged on an alpine ridge -- he jogged in mountain climbing boots.

One of the most challenging missions Williams joined occurred in 1960, when four Seattle climbers fell near the summit of Alaska’s Mt. McKinley, the highest peak in North America. The most seriously injured were evacuated by helicopter from 17,200 feet, an unheard of feat at the time, according to Seattle Mountain Rescue. Teams from Oregon and Washington helped bring down the others, but a subsequent storm trapped more than 20 rescuers for 10 days.

In the early 1960s, Williams scaled Mt. McKinley, and he reached the summit of Mt. Rainier at least nine times. He had climbed extensively in Washington, Oregon and Canada, and had attempted peaks in Mexico and Argentina.

But during an expedition more than 20 years ago, Williams turned away from climbing.

“He looked up at this great mountain and realized he had a thin window of opportunity to climb it,” his son said. “He said, ‘At that moment, I made the decision between my family and my climbing career.’ ”

The ex-mountaineer became a beach hiker and in 1985 published “Oregon Coast Hikes,” a guidebook to 68 different hikes along the state’s 350-mile shore.

Williams still indulged his spirit of adventure by leading travel trips, including searching for Noah’s Ark on Mt. Ararat in Turkey.

He also trekked to the Arctic in 1989 to try to uncover the remains of John Franklin, a 19th-century British explorer who led a doomed expedition.

Paul Martin Williams was born in 1925 in Cleveland. When he was 4, the family moved to Seattle.

After high school, Williams attended Seattle University and worked summers in logging camps. He served with the Marines in the Pacific in World War II.

In 1952, Williams earned his law degree at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash. He specialized in wills and trusts, and spent most of his career in the Seattle area.

While admitting that rescue work could be “a bummer,” he told the Seattle Times in 1986 that, “when you get a good one ... you feel on top of the world.”

In addition to his son Brian, Williams is survived by Pat, his wife of 54 years; five other sons; two daughters; a brother; 14 grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.