Sam has contacted me by e-mail. Jobe, I talked with Greg Hoffman the USFS ORV enforcement ranger and he told me that HWY 173 is open from the Lake Arrowhead area, all the way through to where it hits pavement again at the PCT near the Mojave Forks dam. He said there were no closed gates on it. Sounds like you encountered a gate on another road around HWY173 as you mentioned in that fairly recent post. At least thats what he told me. Now significant snow does make that route impassable at times, especially since much of it is not graded when snow falls.