The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:

Ascent \As*cent"\ [Formed like descent, as if from a F. ascente,
   fr. a verb ascendre, fr. L. ascendere. See Ascend,
   Descent.]
   1. The act of rising; motion upward; rise; a mounting upward;
      as, he made a tedious ascent; the ascent of vapors from
      the earth.
      [1913 Webster]

            To him with swift ascent he up returned. --Milton.
      [1913 Webster]

   2. The way or means by which one ascends.
      [1913 Webster]

   3. An eminence, hill, or high place. --Addison.
      [1913 Webster]

   4. The degree of elevation of an object, or the angle it
      makes with a horizontal line; inclination; rising grade;
      as, a road has an ascent of five degrees.
      [1913 Webster]

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006):

ascent
    n 1: an upward slope or grade (as in a road); "the car couldn't
         make it up the rise" [syn: ascent, acclivity, rise,
         raise, climb, upgrade] [ant: declension,
         declination, decline, declivity, descent,
         downslope, fall]
    2: a movement upward; "they cheered the rise of the hot-air
       balloon" [syn: rise, rising, ascent, ascension] [ant:
       fall]
    3: the act of changing location in an upward direction [syn:
       rise, ascent, ascension, ascending]

Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0:

189 Moby Thesaurus words for "ascent":
   Brownian movement, Great Leap Forward, abruptness, access,
   accession, acclivity, accretion, accrual, accruement, accumulation,
   addition, advance, advancement, aggrandizement, airiness,
   amelioration, amendment, amplification, angular motion, apotheosis,
   appreciation, ascending, ascension, assumption, augmentation,
   axial motion, backflowing, backing, backward motion, ballooning,
   beatification, bettering, betterment, bloating, boom, boost,
   broadening, bubbliness, buildup, buoyancy, canonization, career,
   climb, climbing, course, crescendo, current, daintiness,
   deification, delicacy, descending, descent, development, downiness,
   downward motion, drift, driftage, ebbing, edema, elevation,
   enhancement, enlargement, enrichment, enshrinement, erection,
   escalation, ethereality, eugenics, euthenics, exaltation,
   expansion, extension, flight, floatability, flood, flow,
   fluffiness, flux, foaminess, forward motion, frothiness,
   furtherance, gain, gentleness, gossameriness, greatening, growth,
   gush, headway, height, hike, improvement, increase, increment,
   inflation, jump, lack of weight, leap, levitation, levity, lift,
   lifting, lightness, melioration, mend, mending, mounting,
   multiplication, oblique motion, ongoing, onrush, passage, pickup,
   plunging, precipitousness, preferment, productiveness, progress,
   progression, proliferation, promotion, radial motion, raise,
   raising, random motion, rearing, recovery, reflowing, refluence,
   reflux, regression, restoration, retrogression, revival, rise,
   rising, rising ground, run, rush, set, sideward motion, sinking,
   snowballing, soaring, softness, spread, steepness, sternway,
   stream, subsiding, surge, sursum corda, swelling, tenderness,
   traject, trajet, trend, tumescence, unheaviness, up, upbeat,
   upbuoying, upcast, upclimb, upgo, upgrade, upheaval, uphill,
   uplift, uplifting, upping, uprearing, uprise, uprising, upsurge,
   upswing, upthrow, upthrust, uptrend, upturn, upward mobility,
   upward motion, verticalness, vise, volatility, waxing,
   weightlessness, widening, yeastiness