Thanks for the ideas gang. I’ve never been able to open powerlinks with my fingers and I haven’t achieved any reliable results with needle-nose pliers either.
I’ve ordered the real cheapo Lifeline master link pliers from wiggle. When the arrive I intend to reduce the length of the handles to the minimum that will still allow them to work.
Why did I want to undo the link on the trail? Because I got a branch caught in my mech and broke the mech-hanger with the chain still attached. I wanted to try to single speed it as an emergency but in the end I just removed mech & chain and pushed and free-wheeled for a few miles.
PS. Have you noticed that KMC chains are great value, but the separate powerlinks are about 3.5 times the cost of SRAM?