I suppose the boss is exclusive for Dominating difficulty. Great place for scavenging high quality crafting components regardless and interesting as a piece of environmental storytelling.
While climbing this particular area that grew ever colder with altitude, I was wondering if the surface world in the setting became long ago a frozen wasteland due to a new ice age or a more permanent situation of a dying, dimming sun, even hoping for a glimpse of it on top through a gap amidst the rubble and permafrost of a collapsed and no longer accessible surface access. I was sort of disappointed that was not the case and this area by itself doesn't really show or tell anything certain about the surface, for the fact it gets colder doesn't necessarily mean the surface is the reason for it, thus the actual reason for the migration to the underground remains a mystery. Perhaps in Infusion there will be somewhere a more solid and clear hint of what apocalyptic event or events happened to the surface.
On the other hand there is nothing that disproves the surface world in Underrail is, among other things, a now centuries-old frozen wasteland from whence the megacorps and those lucky enough to get in with the apex technocrats escaped before it was too late. This area may be circumstantial evidence of that unless the real explanation for its freezing climate is psionics.
