Unable to do the complete trip, but made the best of it anyway.

https://dr650rider.blogspot.ca/p/mt.html

XT ran like a fine Swiss watch.

Looks like a nice ride, even with the random gate. Those seem to pop up here as well. Most of the roads are owned/managed by the US Forest Service. Their maintenance budget seems largely underwhelming so whenever there's a weather event that causes washouts or significant trees to come down, they tend to just put up gates until they get around to making the roads passable again. There's also been issues with property owners putting up gates on roads that may (or may not) be theirs in the first place. It gets confusing and tends to take a long time to sort out.

Around here, the Logging companies are allowed to erect gates BUT they must allow passage if requested, since it is Crown Land.
Unfortunately, this involves a visit to their office, during business hours, to pick up a key...in other words, they make it inconvenient.

If I had known there was a gate, I would have gone elsewhere.

We are pretty luck here in Arizona, everything is still open for now. The cattlemen use to have gates we had to open on National Forest & BLM lands but in the last 10 years most have been replaced with cattle guards. Makes for a nice continuous ride.

Check out Backcountry Discovery Routes, http://ridebdr.com/

rocmoc n AZ

...or watch a bigger version here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEp5vuRLtjE&feature=youtu.be