A dozen passengers were evacuated by an Italian rescue team. That part of the operation was not done by helicopter because the cable car was close enough to the ground, according to Mathieu Dechavanne, the chief executive of the company that manages the cable cars.

The rescue effort resumed Friday morning.

The cars stopped because supporting cables and towing cables crossed in several places.

“We managed to uncross the cables in two places by pulling them, but we did not manage to uncross them in the third one,” Mr. Dechavanne said in a phone interview.

Mr. Dechavanne said he had called the rescue services at 5 p.m. to start evacuating the passengers.

“We had to do it by helicopter and not vertically like we can do it in other places, because the ground underneath is of a glacial type so there is a risk of crevasses and it could lead to accidents,” he said.