From the article:

This was about 7 a.m. Friday, about 22 hours after the trail run began, and it could have marked the beginning of a campaign to find Bradley. But "nowhere in that conversation did we get information that he was a runner, that he'd crossed the Tonto, or that there were two of them," says Yeston. (The USGS employee declined to be interviewed for this article.)

Apparently, the companion had come to believe that Bradley had reached Phantom Ranch. Somehow — and the rescue rangers shake their heads at this — the runner hiked out of the canyon (with the phone-bearing USGS employee as his guide), held conversations with a commercial guide and a trail crew worker, and got a ride back to Flagstaff, yet never transmitted the idea that his partner might need rescuing.

This seems outrageous to me. How can that have happened?