So as I mentioned that I towed a much heavier boat, with a much crappier minivan in most certainly substantially crappier ramps (we have endless lakes to boat but the downside is that only select ramps on certain lakes are even marginal at best with a few high end lakes getting the gold star treatment), I figured out that it's tires, tires and tires that makes the difference. While I have now had several truck based suv's that were meant to tow that can't even be mentioned in the same sentence as a minivan, what I learned it it takes very, very little torque to actually pull out of the worst and steepest ramps. With my 180hp/200lb tq minivan, I would simply give it a very small amount of pedal and out it came every time with suprisingly little fuss with the correct tires. It was a stupid and shortsighted move to use a minivan to tow what I was towing but It takes very little to make it do what you want it to do. There is simply no way in hel1 I would have my wife or kids jump on the hood of the van. At a certain point you decide do you want to be a boater with the correct equipment or not.
The staging area is the road leading down to the ramp. This is how the ramps are set up at a couple of the lakes that I use, the others have zero room to do as you describe.
