The view from an overlook at West Peak on the Weathersfield Trail on Mount Ascutney provides scenic panoramas of southeastern Vermont.

TPN / BOB MACDONNELL

You want colorful fall foliage? You want leaves in numbers that will make the national debt seem like single digits?

Climb a mountain.

You get leaves at the macro level, that vast mosaic of colors you’ll see from the summit, if you pick the right mountain at the right time. And you’ll get leaves at the micro-level, hanging from all those low-hanging limbs you’ll pass as you hike from the bottom to the top of the mountain and back.

There are a number of good mountains for foliage viewing in New England. Mount Moosilauke in New Hampshire’s White Mountains is a beauty, and a good bit of exercise. Less difficult and offering fine views is Mount Monadnock in New Hampshire. On an October day last fall I hiked yet another fine foliage peak, Mount Ascutney in Vermont.

Travelers worry that they’ll make a special trip to see the fall foliage and arrive to find the color is early or late — that the color is not fully developed, or worse, gone by. But the window of good color in New England is often several weeks long, and the first three weeks of October are a good bet in much of the region.

Climbing a mountain somewhere in the middle of great foliage country is a good way to hedge your bets on the timing. A good-sized mountain, especially like some in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, or western Connecticut and Massachusetts, will have so many microclimates that on any given day you can find a mix of foliage conditions. Sometimes the base of the mountain has moderate fall color while the middle or upper reaches have peak or near-peak color.

As you climb, then, it is as if the pages of the calendar were flipping by.

We started early on our hike up Ascutney, stopping by the information kiosk at the trailhead about 8:30 a.m. Among other suggestions, the sign advises allowing 30 minutes per mile, plus 30 minutes for each 1,000 feet of elevation. The hike to the summit is 2.9 miles, with an elevation gain of slightly more than 2,000 feet. That meant about four hours of hiking time.

Off we went, following white blazes painted on tree trunks every 100 feet or so.

We quickly reached Little Cascade Falls, stopped for a moment, and continued a total of about a mile until we reached Crystal Cascade, a scenic waterfall with an 84-foot drop, where there were several red maples in full scarlet color overhanging Ascutney Brook.

We had arrived after some rain, with an overcast sky, but it cleared and warmed as we climbed. By the time we reached the summit there was off-and-on sunshine and we were hiking in T-shirts.

Cell phone reception at the summit is excellent, as it better be; you will share the rocky peak with communications towers. Nonetheless, there are expansive, unobstructed views to the east and south, especially of the Connecticut River Valley, one of the real rewards of the hike.

On this October day there was great variety in the fall color, as each species expressed itself: hickories, yellow birch, beech, several maple species, the oaks, mountain ash.

In places, hemlock and spruces flaunted the green they don’t give up.

Nearby were patches of forest with a rich mix of yellows, reds and orange, and swamps where the reds of the red maples were dominant. We chatted with a young couple from Chicago visiting New England to see the color. I told them I thought the best was still a week away, but they were impressed enough with the color at hand.

Just below the summit, as we headed back down, we stopped at West Peak, with great views south and west. A mother and her children who live nearby were having a picnic lunch and enjoying the leaves.

“Tuesdays we hike,” said Wendy Tetrault. “We call it our wandering day.”

We took out water bottles and snacks and, with good visibility, explored a vast swath of Vermont with our eyes.

Mount Ascutney is not Mount Everest, nor even Mount Washington; it took us only 4½ hours to go up and down, including stops. But in that time, we realized, we had taken in an entire season of the fall color.If you go

FROM PROVIDENCE: Take Route 146 to the Mass Pike (I-90) interchange. Follow the pike west across Massachusetts to I-91. Take I-91 North to Vermont Exit 8 and drive 3.3 miles to a right turn (North) onto Cascade Falls Road. Bear left at the fork to a right turn at 3.6 miles. Follow up a short steep hill to the Ascutney State Park parking area. Check the information board for the blue-blazed Weathersfield Trail, which ascends log stairs as it enters the woods, or the white-blazed Old Weathersfield Trail.

ON THE WEB: For information on lodging and dining in the area and foliage conditions, check the Vermont Department of Tourism and Marketing Web site: www.vermontvacation.com. Weekly foliage reports also are available on Vermont’s toll-free information line, (800) 837-6668. Reports will be updated on Tuesdays and Thursdays through October.