just a few comments.
Contrary to your understanding, the selection of VV or HH polarization does not primarily result in vertical or horizontal displacements. Both measure the change of elevation along the line of sight. There are many topics discussing how to get absolute displacements but this is not possible with a single scene and also not implemented in SNAP.
Your processing steps seem correct but probably the perpendicular baseline is not ideal, also the quality of the orbit files plays a role, especially if the data looks “ramped” like in your case.
Also it would be worth trying a different DEM for the topographic phase removal and compare if the output makes more sense.
Finally, as you are working on very large areas and the final resolution will probably of minor importance I would suggest multi-looking to about 30 meters (the resolution of SRTM 1Sec) after the debursting. Of course this reduces the spatial resolution but the outcome is less prone to unwrapping errors and these kind of ramps could be avoided. I personally think having more realistic displacements over the full area is more important than the size of the final pixels.