It’s a photo finish on road race up Northeast’s highest peak

PINKHAM NOTCH, N.H. (AP) — The annual race up the highest peak in the Northeast has ended in the first photo finish.

Twenty-nine-year-old Brittni Hutton, of Lubbock, Texas, led the entire race but 27-year-old Heidi Caldwell, of Craftsbury Common, Vermont, caught her at the finish line Saturday.

Both finished with a time of 1 hour, 16 minutes, 17 seconds in the women’s division of the 7.6-mile (12-kilometer) race to the 6,288-foot (1,917-meter) summit of Mount Washington. Judges initially thought Hutton had won but later declared a tie.

Forty-year-old Eric Blake, of West Hartford, Connecticut, won the men’s division with a time of 1:02:52, besting Kenyan Francis Kamiri by about a minute.

Mount Washington, known for weather extremes, had a temperature of about 37 degrees and gusts of 50 mph at the start of the race.

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This story has been corrected to show that race officials, upon further review, declared a tie in the women’s division.