Ah, that is so helpful! Thank you.

Well, I'll cross out releasing him as an option for now. I figured it wouldn't be good to put him out in near-freezing temps when he hasn't had time to adjust gradually.

VERY glad to hear that neglecting to hibernate him won't necessarily ruin his reproductive odds. I'm fairly confident he's a male - I actually heard him loudly singing the classic GTF song the last time I was in my mother's apartment (I kept thinking red-bellied woodpecker and was SO confused; we didn't know about the frog yet. As soon as she called me and said something about a "toad" I remembered the song and knew exactly what she had on her hands, haha.)

Okay, so it's between hibernating/estivating/burminating and just caring for him through the winter.
I guess I need to determine how difficult it might be for me to safely get him into hibernation. If I could safely have him enter hibernation, and then keep him in the right circumstances, it would be far easier to look after him (and easier to convince my fiance, heh...)

So before I make a call between those plans, I'd love to have more specific directions. I don't have anything like a wine cooler, though I do have a mini fridge in the basement that could theoretically be adjusted to one temperature and left alone down there just for him. (If we're not opening and closing it for food access, maybe the temperature would stay consistent?)

I've searched the forums and elsewhere for really good directions on how to properly prepare frogs and cool them down to hibernation, but I'm having trouble finding reliable sources with good specifics (Ie, timelines of when to feed and stop feeding, temperatures and acclimatization times needed before cooling more, appropriate containers and during-hibernation care, how to safely wake back up, etc).

I won't attempt hibernation if I think it's outside my knowledge and means, but I'll need a pretty tight run-down on how to do it before I can decide whether I trust myself to pull that off.

If I do decide to set up a vivarium for him, would you recommend just letting the crickets loose in the vivarium and cleaning them out if they're not eaten fairly soon?