An aerial view of the world's tallest high Mount Everest(L).
© AFP/File Kazuhiro Nogi

KATHMANDU (AFP) - No one knows whether the two Englishmen made it to the top because they died high on the mountain.

But two modern climbers have been on Everest in a fresh bid to discover if the early pioneers were the first men to stand at the top of the world.

They have returned with a few circumstantial clues, and plenty of respect for Mallory and Irvine.

"These guys, without a shadow of a doubt, got above the yellow band," said American climber Conrad Anker, who has made it a personal quest to find out how high George Mallory and "Sandy" Irvine really got.

The yellow band is a prominent landmark at 8,500 metres (28,050 feet), tantilisingly shy of the 8,848 metre (29,198 foot) summit.

"That's pretty damn bold for 83 years ago," he said.

Anker's team was on Everest earlier this month replicating the 1924 climb for a documentary.

This included dressing up in tweed clothing and using the same archaic equipment as Mallory and Irvine, although they did have high-tech gadgetry and assistance to fall back on.

Unidentified mountaineers outside the advance base camp of Mount Everest
© AFP/HO/File

"We went up there and tried it out in hobnailed boots and gentlemen's clothes, and we got our asses handed to us," laughed Anker, who found Mallory's corpse on a 1999 Everest expedition and took on his role in the filming.

The 1924 effort was the third summit attempt by Mallory, who biographers say became increasingly obsessed with reaching the top of the mountain he described as a "prodigious white fang, an excrescence from the jaw of the world."

And his attempts -- decades before Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay's successful 1953 summit -- were certainly impressive.

"In many ways on their expeditions they were nailing it," said Leo Houlding, a 26-year-old climber from the Peak District in northern England, who played the role of Irvine in the documentary.

"They picked the right line, they picked the right campsites, they spent a whole season looking for the route up mountain and they found it."

According to accounts of the 1924 expedition, Mallory and Irvine were last seen "going strong for the top."

Anker and Houlding focused their climb on the crux of the mystery and the climb -- would it have been possible for Mallory and Irvine to have climbed the 'Second Step', a notorious wall of rock just below the summit?

Since the 1960s, the obstacle has been surmounted by a ladder. But to answer that part of the Mallory and Irvine debate, Anker's team removed the ladder and still reached the summit.

"What we have learned from our ascent of the Second Step is that it is within the capabilities of Mallory and Irvine to have climbed it. Whether they did so or not, we don't know," Anker said.

And Houlding pointed out that the modern-day team, even the replica climbers, had huge advantages.

"It's not just a question of kit, it's also the knowledge they didn't have," he said.

"Our biggest advantage was not the equipment, but the fact that Russell Brice (the expedition organiser) has amazing weather forecasts, strategy and infrastructure on the mountain," he said.

Whether they summitted is a moot point anyway, Anker said.

"As much as it would be great to say they made it to the top, a successful ascent means getting back," said Anker, echoing a viewpoint shared by Hillary.

Regardless, the steely Englishmen of 1924 deserve to go down in history as great, tough mountaineering pioneers, said Houlding.

"I have got so much more respect for Mallory and Irvine having been here and seen what the conditions were like and seen what their equipment was like," he said.

"They were much more manly than us."

©AFP