An international team of mountaineers trying to solve the mystery of whether Mt. Qomolangma was conquered long before Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay did in 1953, has said that the climb could well have been done in 1924.

According to Friday's The Himalayan Times report, Altitude Everest (Qomolangma) expedition has been testing 1920s-style clothing and replicas of the equipment used by British climbers George Mallory and Sandy Irvine on their ill-fated bid to scale the world's highest peak 83 years ago.

Climbers from the expedition reached the summit of the 8,848-meter peak on Thursday, after removing a ladder near the summit that would not have been there for Mallory and Irvine.

The two Britons were last seen alive on June 8, 1924, just 800 meters short of the summit. They were apparently "going strong for the top", and whether or not they made it remains one of mountaineering's greatest mysteries.

"Their success at the summit, without the use of the ladder, adds weight to the theory that George Mallory and Sandy Irvine may have made it to the summit in 1924, 29 years before Hillary and Tenzing," organizers of the US-British expedition said in a statement.

Conrad Anker, the American climber leading the expedition, discovered Mallory's corpse high on the mountain in 1999 -- and climbers continue to hunt for a camera that may contain a summit photo.

Hillary has already played down the importance of the mystery, saying that what matters is not reaching the top first -- but making it down alive to tell the tale.

The team had waited until the very end of the spring climbing season to ensure that modern climbers and their equipment would not appear in documentary footage they have been filming.