The panoramic Vallee Blanche Cable Car rises to an altitude of 12,395ft (3,778m).
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A team of engineers worked from dawn to untangle the wires and managed to restart the cable auto early on Friday morning.
Up to 80 people are trapped in cable cars in the French Alps and are expected to be stuck overnight after cables became tangled.
A rescue helicopter takes off towards the Mont-Blanc cable vehicle during a rescue operation on Friday in Courmayeur, Italy.
Twelve people were rescued late Thursday night because their cable cars were hanging low enough that rescue workers could get to them safely, said Iaian Cleaver, an employee of Mont-Blanc Company, which owns the cable auto service. Cazeneuve said 65 of them were rescued in helicopters before operations were halted for the night – leaving 45 dangling in 27 cars about 2 miles in the air.
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“The extent of this rescue operation is simply unbelievable”, Col. Frederic Labrunye, commander of the local gendarmerie, told the AP.
According to operators, a rescue mission is underway and the tourists will reach the ground on Friday.
“The helicopter rescue failed because the fog moved in, so we had to just wait and then they decided they could bring us safely to the ground, and we walked up the glacier to the hut”, she added.
An elderly man was treated for hypothermia but all the passengers trapped overnight in the small four-person pods were in good condition despite their ordeal, police said.
The regional Le Dauphine newspaper reports that the rescue operation has been suspended for safety reasons – however, those still trapped have been given water, food and survival blankets.
The tourists rescued are understood to be French, Italian and American.
Dozens of tourists had to spend the night in cable cars suspended over the mountain when the machines stopped working.
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The 5km ride connects Aiguille du Midi on the French side of the mountain and the Helbronner summit on the Italian border and usually takes 30 minutes to complete. A technical team from the company was unable to fix the cables and chose to call the mountain police rescuers.
