DAR ES SALAAM, June 18 (Xinhuanet) -- Two climbers from Down Under have broken the record for a return trip to Africa's highest mountain Kilimanjaro.

    Taking the toughest route last week, Peter Gruber and Thomas Brunauer have clocked nine hours and 50 minutes to scale the 5,895-meter mountain and get back to where they started, according to reports reaching here on Saturday.

    The roundtrip usually takes climbers five to seven days to make.

    The previous roundtrip record for climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, the world's highest solitary mountain, was held by American climber Thomas Guminsky who used 21 hours to go up and down the mountain that stands at 328 kilometers south of the Equator.

    Mount Kilimanjaro, located in northern Tanzania, is made up of three extinct volcanoes -- Kibo, Mawenzi and Shira. It attracts some 26,000 climbers and adventurers a year from around the world.

    The single-trip record for scaling the mountain is five hours, 28 minutes 58 seconds chalked up by Sean Burch from the United States who went up the mountain on June 7 this year along the Marangu route, one of the three classic routes to scale Mount Kilimanjaro. Enditem