A thermal drilling was carried cut in August of 1974 on the Khumbu Glacier flowing from Mt. Sagarmatha (English name Everest) in the East Nepal Himalayas. The drilling site was set at 5, 360 m above sea-level in the upper part of the ablation area of the glacier.
The drilling was continued to a depth of 20.3 m where the drilling stopped due to the freezing of the drilled hole. Down to the depth, the relationship between the depth and the time of drilling was obtained, and the analysis of the results obtained showed that there were 7 layers down to a depth of 20 m. Three layers of them were ordinary glacier ice layers, three layers were blue ice layers or ice layers contaminated with dirt, and one layer corresponded to a vertically distributed ice layer containing air bubbles or a horizontally distributed ice layer containing water.
A simple calculation of the freezing rate of the drilled hole showed that the ice temperature at a depth of 2 m was below -2°C at the time of drilling. The measurement of the resistance of a thermister put into the hole showed the ice temperature at a depth of 2.7 m was -5.3°C on 23rd November. Therefore, it was concluded that the distribution of ice temperature in the ablation area of the glacier might be of the polar type.