Ustengrav Depths gates: can my follower follow?

In general, if I pass an obstacle that my follower can't navigate, I can walk up ahead a bit then rest for an hour. This almost always forces your follower to teleport beside you.

I've gone through Ustengrav three times with different characters (albeit never with a follower) and the gates have always stayed open after I got through without me needing to do anything deliberate to open them. I have a vague memory of there being a pull chain there which I assumed would open them if necessary, but I may be imagining that, given all the other traps with a pull chain to disable them after you get through.

In any case, it sounds like it bugged out on you. Maybe you timed things just right so that you went past the activator that's supposed to lock them open so quickly that it didn't trigger?