What the rock records

Materials break in characteristic ways. Cooling lava contracts into hexagonal columns for the same reason drying mud makes polygons. Limestone dissolves along its joints, so where it is jointed and the rain is heavy the rock is left standing in blades and pillars. Granite weathers in curved shells and leaves rounded blocks stacked where the joints divided it.

Rate matters as much as material. A slot canyon this narrow and this smooth was cut by rare violent floods rather than a permanent river. Badlands need soft sediment, hard rain and no plant cover at once. Folded rock means the squeezing happened slowly and deep enough for the rock to bend instead of snap — which puts you near a plate boundary.